PS 

3053 

A3 


ait 


LIBRARY 


OF 

r>  *  VTC 


One  hundred  and  fifty  copies  printed, 
No. 


Henry  D.  Thoreau,  age  44. 

From  an  ambrotype  by  Dunshee,  of  New  Bedford,  Mass., 
taken  in  August,  1861.   Thoreau  died  the  following  spring. 


. 

SOME  UNPUBLISHED 
LETTERS   OF 

HENRY  D.  AND  SOPHIA  E. 

THOREAU 

A  CHAPTER  IN  THE  HISTORY 
OF  A  STILL-BORN  BOOK 


' '  He  noblest  lives  and  noblest  dies  who  makes  and  keeps 
his  self-made  laws." 

The  Kasldah  of  Haji  Abdu  El-YezdL 


EDITED  WITH  A  PREFATORY  NOTE 

BY 
SAMUEL  ARTHUR  JONES 


PRINTED  ON  THE  MARION  PRESS 

M  JAMAICA,  QUEENSBOROUGH,  NEW-YORK 
1899 


LIBRA 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFO2IDJ 


Copyright,  1898,  by 
SAMUEL  ARTHUR  JONES. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

OPP.  PAGE 

Henry  D.  Thoreau,  age  44  .  Title 
Home  of  the  Thoreau  family  .  22 
Henry  D.  Thoreau,  age  39  .  .  37 
Henry  D.  Thoreau,  age  37  .  .  53 

Sophia  E.  Thoreau 72 

Burial-plot  of  the  Thoreau  family  80 

From  negatives  by 

ALFRED  W.  HOSMER, 

Concord,  Mass. 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 

LEARNING  that  Thoreau  had 
once  a  Western  correspondent, 
and  knowing  that  these  of  his  letters 
had  not  been  published,  it  occurred 
to  the  slightly  irascible  and  some 
what  eccentric  ex-professor  that  it 
were  worth  while  to  make  search 
therefor:  possibly  that  correspondence 
might  be  recovered.  Thoreau's  cor 
respondent  was  found  without  diffi 
culty, — an  aged  and  venerable  man, 
— and  to  the  great  surprise  of  the 
ex-professor  the  holographs  were 
transferred  to  his  keeping,  and  are 
used  by  the  present  editor  in  prepar 
ing  the  text  of  this  book. 

vii 


Thoreau's  letters  are  in  themselves 
but  a  trifle,  yet  they  give  character 
istic  glimpses  of  him;  those  of  his 
sister  reveal  a  phase  of  his  character 
that  is  not  so  widely  known  as  it  de 
serves,  and  in  justice  to  a  dead  man 
should  be. 

The  story  of  these  simple  letters  is 
briefly  as  follows:  George  Bipley's 
review  of  Walden;  or,  Life  in  the 
Woods,  led  a  distant  reader  to  write 
to  Ticknor  and  Company  for  a  copy, 
the  chief  incitement  being  the  liberal 
citations  from  the  book  itself.  Upon 
receiving  the  volume  it  was  almost 
literally  devoured;  a  somewhat  pe 
culiar  spiritual  experience  had  pre 
pared  the  way  for  it  with  that  remote 
reader;  he  then  found  it  sweet  in 
the  mouth,  and  after  forty  years  it 
has  not  proven  bitter  in  the  belly. 

viii 


Of  course  the  book  had  "found"  its 
reader,  as  Coleridge  would  say  of 
such  a  divine  conjunction,  and  like 
the  famishing  charity  boy,  that  par 
ticular  reader  wanted  "some  more." 
That  earnest  man,  reading  Walden, 
and  one  of  the  few  of  that  day  able  to 
read  it  '  between  the  lines/ — reading 
and  pondering  under  the  burr-oaks  in 
the  silence  of  the  forest  solitude, — 

" — felt  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his 
ken." 

From  the  title-page  of  Walden 
he  learned  that  Thoreau  was  also  the 
author  of  another  book,  A  Week  on 
the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Rivers. 
Failing  to  obtain  a  copy  of  this 
from  the  publishers  of  Walden  or 
any  other  rource  then  known  to  him, 

ix 


the  seeker  managed  to  get  Thoreau's 
address  and  made  application  directly 
to  him ;  and  there  the  correspondence 
begins. 

Thoreau  and  his  Western  corre 
spondent  never  met,  though  at  one 
point  of  the  hopeless  journey  to  Min 
nesota  in  search  of  health  one  hour's 
ride  would  have  brought  them  to 
gether;  but  the  doomed  pilgrim  knew 
that  he  must  speedily  return  to  put 
his  house  in  order,  for  he  was  not 
deceived  in  regard  to  his  bodily  con 
dition.  "I  think,"  he  wrote  to  Mr. 
Ricketson,  "that,  on  the  whole,  my 
health  is  better  than  when  you  were 
here ;  but  my  faith  in  the  doctors  has 
not  increased." 

The  correspondence  with  Sophia 
E.  Thoreau  arose  from  a  letter  of 
condolence,  on  the  death  of  her 
brother,  written  more  than  a  month 


after  that  event.  A  subsequent  visit 
to  Concord  brought  the  distant  Mend 
and  the  Thoreau  survivors  face  to 
face :  it  was  the  res  angustce  domi 
alone  that  had  prevented  such  a 
meeting  with  Thoreau  himself.  The 
visitor  from  afar  was  tenderly  re 
ceived  by  both  the  mourning  mother 
and  sister  and  Thoreau's  friends  Al- 
cott  and  Channing.  Before  returning, 
the  pilgrim  was  requested  by  both 
Mrs.  Thoreau  and  Sophia  to  select 
from  the  library  of  his  departed  friend 
some  books  for  keepsakes.  Thus  it 
came  that  both  the  ex-professor  and 
the  present  editor  saw  and  touched 
the  very  copy  of  Lempriere's  Clas 
sical  Dictionary  that  had  been  Tho- 
reau's  when  he  was  an  undergraduate 
in  Harvard  College, — the  first  fly 
leaf  bearing  the  autograph:  "D.  H. 
Thoreau."  This  is  written  in  ink, 

xi 


while  on  the  succeeding  leaf  is  the 
pencilled  inscription,  "Mr.  .  .  .  from 
S.  E.  Thoreau."  The  book  selected 
as  a  memento  for  the  visitor's  wife  is 
an  American  edition  of  The  Specta 
tor,  two  volumes  in  one,  Philadel 
phia,  1832.  On  the  title-page  is  an 
autograph,  in  a  fine  clerkly  hand: 
"  J.  Thoreau."  It  is  the  signature  of 
Thoreau's  father,  a  man,  according  to 
one  biographer,  "who  led  a  plodding, 
unambitious  and  respectable  life  in 
Concord  village."  It  is  not  men 
tioned  whether  he  'kept  a  gig';  but 
commend  us  always  to  the  'plodder' 
who,  from  his  scanty  means,  provides 
his  family  book-shelf  with  a  substan 
tially  bound  and  well  printed  copy  of 
the  Spectator.  One  can  readily  be 
lieve  that  such  a  man  was  respected, 
gigless  though  he  be ;  but  few  would 
have  the  hardihood  to  declare  that  a 

xii 


father  who  furnishes  the  Spectator 
for  his  children's  reading  is  'unambi 
tious.'  Perhaps  the  highest  ambition 
lies  in  a  wise  forecast  that  is  not  for 
one's  self; 

"But  Brutus  says  he  was  (un) am 
bitious  ; 
And  Brutus  is  an  honorable  man." 

The  sterling  native  worth  of  Tho- 
reau's  Western  correspondent  was 
quickly  discerned  by  not  only  Tho- 
reau's  mother  and  sister:  Thoreau's 
friends  recognized  and  honored  it. 
The  transparent-souled  Alcott  was 
moved  to  the  highest  issues  of  friend 
ship,  as  sundry  inscribed  presentation 
copies  of  the  writings  of  that  belated 
Platonist  amply  testify;  and  William 
Ellery  Channing,  the  "man  of  genius, 
and  of  the  moods  that  sometimes  make 

3  xiii 


genius  an  unhappy  boon,"  was  thawed 
into  human  warmth,  as  specially  in 
scribed  copies  of  his  books — perhaps 
the  most  elusive  "  first  (and  only  that) 
editions"  that  ever  mocked  the  book- 
hunter's  desire  —  amply  show,  on 
those  precious  shelves,  where  the  ex- 
professor  and  the  present  editor  saw 
them  for  the  first  and  only  time.  One 
who  has  been  allowed  access  to  those 
richly  laden  shelves  may  be  allowed, 
without  violating  the  sanctity  of  hos 
pitality,  to  bear  witness  to  the  sim 
plicity,  sincerity,  and  serenity  invest 
ing  the  eventide  of  a  true  life  with 
that  ineffable  splendor  which  has  in 
it  the  soul's  strongest  assurance  of  a 
dayspring  beyond  the  mists  of  Life's 
mirage. 

The  Froude  letter  and  that  which 
authenticates  it  are  not  considered 
irrelevant.  The  English  historian's 

xiv 


letter  to  the  Concord  " loafer"  is  in 
troduced  to  show  that  although  his 
first  book  was  'despised  and  rejected' 
of  men,  Thoreau  had  the  assurances 
that  are  always  vouchsafed  to  the  sol 
itary  thinker,  and  these  from  sources 
so  diverse  as  Oxford  University,  just 
ly  proud  of  the  achievements  of  its 
scholars,  and  the  primeval  oak  forest 
of  a  remote  young  State, — a  raw  set 
tlement,  as  it  had  been  called  only 
fifty  years  before.*  It  is  not  whence 
the  apprehension,  the  agreement,  the 
assent;  it  is  who  agrees,  assents,  and 
by  the  cordial  handgrasp  conveys 

*  "At  Ypsilanti  I  picked  up  an  Ann  Arbor 
newspaper.  It  was  badly  printed,  but  its  con 
tents  were  good;  and  it  could  happen  nowhere 
out  of  America  that  so  raw  a  settlement  as 
that  at  Ann  Arbor,  where  there  is  difficulty  in 
procuring  decent  accommodations,  should  have 
a  newspaper." 

Harriet  Martineau.  Society  in  America, 
xv 


to  the  solitary  scholar,  whose  medi 
tations  have  disturbed  Mammon's 
market-place,  the  calm,  unfaltering 
courage  that  is  ever  a  marvel  to  the 
multitude,  which  quietly  'bears  the 
fardels'  of  unthinking  servitude. 

The  difference  between  the  fibre 
of  a  Froude  and  a  Thoreau  will  be 
quickly  distinguished  by  those  who 
have  read  the  exculpatory  preface 
especially  wrritten  for  the  second  edi 
tion  of  Froude's  Nemesis  of  Faith. 
Froude  faced  the  angry  storm  of  in 
censed  detraction  with  the  courage  of 
a  well-equipped  scholar  and  the  dig 
nity  of  a  true  gentleman;  neverthe 
less  he  had  made  an  ' explanation': 
not  the  whole  world  could  have 
moved  Thoreau's  lips  to  anything 
other  than  a  smile  of  infinite  commis 
eration;  he  would  not  have  foregone 
a  single  furlong  of  his  accustomed 

xvi 


'walk';  he  might  indeed  have  whis 
pered  to  his  own  heart, 

"  Time  cannot  bend  the  line  which 
Truth  hath  writ." 

The  present  editor  has  assured 
himself  that  Froude's  presentation 
copy  of  his  self-sacrificing  Nemesis 
of  Faith  is  to  this  day  in  Emerson's 
library  at  the  old  home,  but  he  has 
not  been  able  to  learn  that  Froude 
also  sent  a  copy  to  Thoreau;  so  it 
is  a  safe  inference  that  Thoreau  read 
Emerson's.  A  phrase  in  Froude's 
letter  to  Thoreau  shows  conclusively 
that  Thoreau  had  learned  of  Froude 
from  Emerson  and  that  Thoreau  had 
read  Froude's  ill-starred  Nemesis 
— the  "wild  protest  against  all  au 
thority,  Divine  and  human,"  as  that 
gentlest  of  Quakeresses,  Caroline  Fox, 

xvii 


terms  it.  Froude  writes  this  phrase 
within  inverted  commas:  "not  on  ac 
count  of  his  [Emerson's]  word,  but 
because  I  myself  have  read  and 
know  you."  This  can  refer  only  to 
a  complimentary  copy  of  A  Week 
on  the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Riv 
ers  that  had  been  previously  sent  to 
Froude  either  by  Thoreau  or  their 
mutual  friend  Emerson.  Thoreau 
himself  has  recorded  that  of  his 
still-born  book  some  '  seventy-five 
copies  were  given  away.' 

Froude's  Nemesis  of  Faith  could 
transmit  no  seismic  tremors  to  the 
man  who  would  have  nothing  be 
tween  him  and  Heaven — not  even  a 
rafter.  The  blue  dome  with  its  in 
scrutable  mystery:  nothing  must  ob 
struct  the  soul's  view  of  that!  The 
chapter  in  Thoreau's  Week  en 
titled  "Sunday"  could  readily  cany 

xviii 


to  Froude  the  assurance  that  possibly 
he,  too,  had 

"Builded  better  than  he  knew," 

that  very  possibly  the  angry  Angli 
can  hierarchy  had  merely  mistaken 
a  Church  colic  for  a  universal  cata 
clysm. 

These  two  recalcitrants  never 
touched  hands,  albeit  the  '  steam 
bridges'  were  both  commodious  and 
convenient  Their  perigeum  occurred 
during  Froude's  much  later  visit  to 
Emerson,  and  it  was  in  Sleepy  Hol 
low  burying-ground ;  but  that  peri 
helion  was  sadly  incomplete :  six  feet 
of  graveyard  mould  and  death,  the 
mystery  of  mysteries,  intervened. 
For  both  of  them  now,  no  more  of 
that  mystery.  Oh,  the  boon  of  'cross 
ing  the  bar'! 

xix 


A  word  in  regard  to  the  unusual 
manner  in  which  the  Letters  are  pre 
sented  to  the  reader.  One  with 
whom,  of  all  men  living,  the  present 
editor  is  best  acquainted  (an  effete 
ex-professor,  gouty,  grouty,  and  gray- 
headed)  made  these  Letters  the  sub 
ject  of  a  lecture  delivered  in  aid  of  a 
Women's  Gymnasium  ("More  pow 
er  to  their  elbows ! "  said  the  ex-pro 
fessor)  located — it  is  not  necessary 
to  specify  where.  The  text  as  written 
for  that  occasion  has  been  followed :  a 
convenience  which  all  editors  will 
fully  appreciate.  At  the  risk  of 
marring  the  symmetry  of  the  printed 
page  the  labor-saving  editor  will 
take  the  liberty  of  superposing  such 
patches  of  his  own  plain  homespun 
upon  the  ex-professor's  tapestry  as 
occasion  seems  to  demand  (though 
he  may  be  tempted  of  the  devil  to 


XX 


take  undue  advantage  of  so  rare  an 
opportunity ) .  Being  himself  ' '  as  mild 
a  mannered  man  as  ever  cut  a  throat," 
he  owes  it  to  himself  to  gently  but 
plainly  deprecate  the  ex-professor's 
lapses  into  the  sarcastic.  Both  the 
editor  and  Herr  Teufelsdrockh  be 
lieve  that  sarcasm  is  the  Devil's 
patois.  As  that  is  perilous  stuff,  he  '11 
have  none  of  it;  the  ex-professor 
must  stand  for  his  own  petard:  a 
proposition  which  he  will  be  the  last 
man  to  reject. 

The  typewritten  text  of  the  ex- 
professor's  lecture  is  disfigured  with 
pen-and-ink  interlineations,  and  this 
is  something  so  unusual  that  one  who 
knows  him  so  well  as  doth  the  editor 
could  not  resist  the  very  natural  curi 
osity  which  led  to  the  asking  for  an 
explanation.  This,  as  it  fell  from  the 
ex-professor's  lips,  is  too  characteristic 

4  xxi 


of  him  to  be  withheld;  so  it  shall  be 
shared  with  the  reader — though  this 
complaisance  involves  the  editor  in 
not  a  little  personal  peril. 

Be  it  known  then,  first  of  all,  that 
the  ex-professor  himself  takes  Tho- 
reau  very  seriously ;  does  not  by  any 
possible  interpretation  consider  him 
a  "  glittering  generality,"  but  rather 
a  "blazing  ubiquity"  wherever  and 
whenever  the  blunt,  plain  truth  is 
needful — which  time  and  place  he 
also  believes  is  always  and  every 
where.  Perhaps  an  excerpt  from  the 
ex-professor's  lecture  on  "Thoreau" 
will  best  serve  to  show  his  attitude. 
(This  lecture,  it  may  be  as  well  to 
add,  was  written  for  and  delivered 
in  a  nameless  territory  where  'suc 
cess'  is  a  matter  of  the  bank-book 
rather  than  of  that  old-fashioned  He 
brew  Book.) 

xxii 


"I  am  chiefly  desirous  of  enforcing 
one  consideration  regarding  this  man 
Thoreau,  namely:  that  the  brief  epi 
sode  in  his  life  by  which  he  is  com 
monly  known — the  shanty  life  at 
Walden  Pond — was  not  the  vagary 
of  an  enthusiast.  Reared  in  a  family 
to  every  member  of  which  'life  was 
something  more  than  a  parade  of  pre 
tensions,  a  conflict  of  ambition  or  an 
incessant  scramble  for  the  common 
objects  of  desire/  Thoreau  never  lost 
sight  of  the  high  ideal  which  inspired 
that  humble  household. 

"While  yet  an  undergraduate  he 
believed  that  the  mere  beauty  of  this 
world  transcended  far  all  the  con 
venience  to  which  luxury  would  de 
base  it.  He  then  thought  'the  order 
of  things  should  be  somewhat  re 
versed;  the  seventh  should  be  man's 
day  of  toil,, wherein  to  earn  his  living 

xxiii 


by  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  and  the 
other  six  his  Sabbath  of  the  affections 
and  the  soul, — in  which  to  range  this 
widespread  garden,  and  drink  in  the 
soft  influences  and  sublime  revelations 
of  Nature.' 

"With  darkened  eyes  Milton 
dreamed  of  Paradise  Lost;  with  an 
unfaltering  trust  in  the  beneficence  of 
God  Thoreau  went  forth  in  the  broad 
daylight  to  find  it.  Who  shall  say  of 
him  that  he  failed  of  his  quest;  who 
shall  declare  to  the  struggling  millions 
of  Earth's  toilers  that  Paradise  is,  in 
deed,  irretrievably  lost! 

"Once  before  there  came  to  the 
race  a  man  wearing  a  garment  of 
camel's  hair,  eating  locusts  and  wild 
honey,  and  bearing  a  Message:  per 
haps  this,  too,  is  the  veiled  purpose 
of  him  who  abode  in  that  much-de 
rided  shanty  at  Walden  Pond. 

xxiv 


"Do  we  not  hear  the  sounds  as  of 
satanic  revelry  coming  from  high 
places  in  the  land;  is  not  every 
hreeze  burdened  with  the  muttered 
curses  of  ill-requited  labor  toiling  for 
the  task-masters  until  the  sweat  of 
the  brow  is  that  of  a  Gethsemane 
which  is  only  the  Devil's? 

"The  message-bringer  to  the  nine 
teenth  century  said:  Simplify  your 
lives!  It  is  indeed  a  simple  message, 
but  it  is  fraught  with  terrible  mean 
ing  for  us  all.  If  the  foundations  of 
this  republic  are  to  remain  unshaken 
in  the  stress  of  the  struggle  that  is 
even  now  looming  darkly  before  us, 
it  is  the  application,  by  all,  of  Tho- 
reau's  teachings  that  will  avert  or 
mitigate  the  disaster;  if  the  end  is 
to  be  only  ravined  ruin,  then  will  his 
memory  live  in  Literature  as  our 
everlasting  reproach." 

XXV 


Verily  our  ex-professor  doth  take 
Thoreau  seriously;  but  there  are 
other  matters  that  he  takes  as  seri 
ously,  namely,  the  misconceptions  of 
Thoreau  by  all  and  sundry  inepti 
tudes;  and  on  such  occasions  the  ex- 
professor  certainly  forgets  the  ameni 
ties — but  righteous  wrath  hath  also 
its  own  peculiar  Amen!  Having  said 
this  much,  it  is  due  the  reader  that 
he  should  be  allowed  to  get  a  glimpse 
of  the  ex-professor  in  a  '  spate/  Here 
is  an  instance  from  the  same  lecture : 

"Now  let  us  return  to  the  shanty 
at  Walden  Pond  wherein  Thoreau 
dwelt  alone  for  some  two  and  a  half 
years,  supporting  himself  solely  by 
his  own  labor  and  living  so  'close  to 
the  bone.'  Lowell  has  written  that 
Thoreau  went  there  in  the  self-asser 
tive  mood  of  a  hermit  whose  seclusion 
is  a  declaration  of  his  non-dependence 

xx  vi 


upon  civilization.  'His  shanty  life 
was  a  mere  impossibility,  so  far  as 
his  own  conception  of  it  goes,  as  an 
entire  independency  of  mankind.  The 
tub  of  Diogenes  has  a  sounder  bot 
tom.  Thoreau's  experiment  actually 
presupposed  all  that  complicated  civil 
ization  which  it  theoretically  abjured. 
He  squatted  upon  another  man's  land; 
he  borrows  an  axe;  his  boards,  his 
nails,  his  bricks,  his  mortar,  his  books, 
his  lamp,  his  fish-hooks,  his  plough, 
his  hoe,  all  turn  state's  evidence 
against  him  as  an  accomplice  in  the 
sin  of  that  artificial  civilization  which 
rendered  it  possible  that  such  a  per 
son  as  Henry  D.  Thoreau  should  ex 
ist  at  all.'  I  question  whether  in  all 
the  history  of  criticism  a  blinder  mis 
conception  can  be  found." 

[Just  here   the   ex-professor  was 


XXVll 


evidently  heated.  He  took  the  cus 
tomary  sip  of  water  with  which  the 
professional  lecturer  prepares  his 
learned  larynx  for  its  next  innings. 
Having  returned  the  handkerchief  to 
the  left  hand  coat-tail  pocket,  the 
ex-professor  resumed.] 

"In  the  two  royal-octavo  volumes 
edited  by  Professor  Norton,  Letters 
of  James  Russell  Lowell,  there  is  a 
photogravure  showing  the  poet  sit 
ting  on  the  ground,  by  the  bole  of  an 
ancient  elm.  His  hat  is  off,  his  hair 
is  parted  in  the  middle  (and  this  was 
fifty  years  ago!),  his  head  is  thrown 
forward  so  as  to  put  his  face  in  the 
most  favorable  position  for  pictorial 
effect;  his  whole  attitude  is  of  studied 
ease,  and  the  hand  nearest  the  spec 
tator  is — kid-gloved!  Oh,  the  signi 
ficance  of  that  picture!  Posing  under 

xxviii 


an  elm  in  whose  branches  the  robins 
had  built  their  nests  long  before  the 
Norsemen's  prow  had  grated  upon 
the  sands  of  the  New  England  coast; 
the  small  birds  singing  around  the 
petted  poet,  the  fragrance  of  summer 
filling  the  air,  the  scented  breeze  toy 
ing  with  his  curled  locks,  and  he  car 
rying  into  that  sanctuary — the  kid 
glove  of  'Society7!  Is  this  the  man 
to  comprehend  the  aim  and  purpose 
of  Thoreau, — this  leather  and  pru 
nella  combination  of  'civilization'  and 
6  culture ' ! 

"Yes;  I  am  aware  that  I  am 
speaking  of  a  dead  man,  of  a  man 
whose  pig  weighed  more  than  he 
thought  it  would,  if  one  may  judge 
from  the  tone  of  his  own  early  let 
ters;  of  one  whose  living  tongue 
tasted  the  seducing  sweetness  of 
earthly  fame;  but  there  is  another 

5  xxix 


dead  man,  one  who  was  called  away 
'in  the  midst  of  his  broken  task, 
which  none  else  can  finish,'  and  him 
the  kid-gloved  favorite  of  fame  and 
fashion  has  flouted.  There  is  a  time 
for  all  things;  a  time  for  the  sweet 
charity  of  silence,  a  time  also  for  as 
serting  the  grandeur  of  simple  and 
sincere  manhood :  brown-handed  man 
hood  that  never  saluted  Nature  with 
a  kid  glove.  De  mortuis  nil  nisi 
bonum?  Yes;  I'll  stand  by  that 
sentiment;  but  it  can  also  be  read, 
De  mortuis  nil  nisi  verum :  it  is  well 
also  to  stand  by  that! 

"It  was  Thoreau's  purpose  at  Wai- 
den  Pond  to  find  out  just  how  much 
of  Lowell's  confessedly  '  complicated 
civilization'  was  absolutely  necessary 
in  order  that  Man's  sojourn  in  Nature 
might  be  as  sane  and  serene  as  be 
came  an  immortal  soul.  Did  he  not 


plainly  write,  'I  went  to  the  woods 
because  I  wished  to  live  deliberately, 
to  front  only  the  essential  facts  of  life 
[kid  gloves  not  being  found  in  that 
inventory],  and  see  if  I  could  not 
learn  what  it  had  to  teach,  and  not, 
when  I  came  to  die,  discover  that  I 
had  not  lived.  I  did  not  wish  to  live 
what  was  not  life,  living  is  so  dear; 
nor  did  I  wish  to  practice  resigna 
tion,  unless  it  was  quite  necessary.  I 
wanted  to  live  deep  and  suck  all  the 
marrow  out  of  life,  to  live  so  sturdily 
and  Spartan-like  as  to  put  to  rout  all 
that  was  not  life,  to  cut  a  broad 
swath  and  shave  close,  to  drive  life 
into  a  corner,  and  reduce  it  to  its 
lowest  terms,  and,  if  it  proved  to  be 
mean,  why  then  to  get  the  whole  and 
genuine  meanness  of  it,  and  publish 
its  meanness  to  the  world;  or  if  it 
were  sublime,  to  know  it  by  experi- 

xxxi 


ence,  and  be  able  to  give  a  true  ac 
count  of  it  in  my  next  excursion/ 

"In  my  next  excursion — that  jour 
ney  made  with  closed  eyes  and  folded 
hands;  hands  not  kid-gloved;  bare 
hands  to  lay  hold  on  the  realities  be 
yond  this  Vanity  Fair  that  we  in  our 
ignorance  call  'Life.' 

"Of  a  truth,  Lowell,  a  clergyman's 
son,  could  not  read  the  simple  chart 
by  which  the  son  of  the  Concord 
pencil-maker  shaped  his  course  amidst 
the  sunken  rocks  of  Conventionality." 

But  the  ex-professor's  foibles  are 
making  us  forget  the  pen-and-ink  in 
terlineations  that  are  yet  awaiting 
their  explanations. 

"I  did  not  imagine,"  said  the  ex- 
professor  on  the  morning  after  his 
lecture  on  the  Letters,  "that  any  but 


xxxn 


sensible  people  would  sit  an  hour  to 
hear  an  old  fellow  talk  about  Tho- 
reau;  but,  sir,  on  going  to  the  ap 
pointed  place,  I  found  myself,  and 
most  unexpectedly,  facing  a  parlour 
full  of  frills  and  fine  linen.  An  ex 
ceedingly  well-dressed  young  man  sat 
down  at  the  piano,  and  he  was  im 
mediately  joined  by  another  even 
more  extraordinarily  arrayed.  One 
played  and  the  other  warbled  some 
thing  in  a  tongue  unknown  to  the 
builders  of  Babel,  1 11  warrant.  I 
have  never  in  all  my  life  felt  so 
much  out  of  place  since  the  only 
woman  to  whom  I  ever  proposed 
laughed  outright  in  my  face.  But 
there  was  no  escape ;  I  was  fairly  in 
for  it,  and  I  did  some  curious  think 
ing  whilst  that  nice  young  man  was 
warbling.  The  music  ceased,  and  there 
was  a  small  storm  of  kid-gloved  hand- 

xxxiii 


clapping.  That  disconcerted  me  still 
more;  for  there  was  my  audience 
applauding  some  artistic  noise  which 
I  felt  in  my  very  bones  they  did  not 
understand.  I  had  to  make  peace 
with  myself  before  I  could  begin 
with  my  exposition  of  the  Thoreau 
letters ;  so  I  just  told  them  right  out 
what  I  had  been  thinking  of  whilst 
they  were  listening  to  that  incompre 
hensible  singing.  I  told  them  I  had 
been  thinking  of  the  rude  homeliness 
of  that  shanty  at  Walden  Pond,  and 
that  my  peculiar  environment  just 
then  nearly  paralyzed  me,  and  only 
that  I  had  the  courage  of  my  convic 
tions,  I  could  not  read  the  Thoreau 
letters  then  and  there.  Just  then  a 
distinguished-looking  gentleman,  with 
the  greatest  expanse  of  shirt-front  I 
had  ever  seen  during  all  my  earthly 
career,  adjusted  an  English  monocle 


XXXIV 


to  his  right  eye  and  politely  stared  at 
me.  Worse  than  all,  it  had  not  en 
tered  my  mind  that  I  should  have 
bought  a  pair  of  kid  gloves  for  the 
occasion. 

"It  is  astonishing  how  much  'pun 
ishment7  well-bred  people  will  take 
fully  as  smilingly  as  do  all  the 
'fancy';  but  I  held  them  down,  sir, 
for  a  full  hour  of  torment;  and  cer 
tainly  some  things  got  into  the  talk 
that  were  not  in  the  text.  The  next 
day  a  friend,  whose  wife  was  present, 
told  me  that  when  she  was  putting 
on  her  cloak,  behind  a  screen  in  the 
robing  room,  she  heard  one  ultra- 
fashionable  lady  say  to  another  of  the 
same  species:  "Well,  I  never  was 
bored  so  in  all  my  life!"  Then  I 
knew  that  I  had  scored  a  success. — 
Suppose  I  had  talked  down  to  the 
level  of  hei:  comprehension!" 

XXXV 


The  ex-professor  thereupon  filled 
his  pipe;  the  present  editor  found 
himself  filled  with  reflections  of 
which  there  is  no  need  to  make 
farther  mention. 


XXXVI 


SOME   UNPUBLISHED   LET 
TERS   OF   HENRY   D.  AND 
SOPHIA  E.  THOREAU. 


SOME   UNPUBLISHED   LET 
TERS   OP   HENRY   D.  AND 
SOPHIA   E.  THOREAU. 


THE   FBOUDE   EPISODE. 

HOW  strangely  human  lives  are 
interlinked:  the  chain  of  in 
fluences  beginning  and  ending  how 
little  we  know  where  and  when. 
At  the  first  reading  of  Emerson's 
Each  and  All,  who  is  not  startled 
by  the  lines — 

Nor  knowest  thou  what  argument 
Thy  life  to  thy  neighbor's  creed  hath 
lent. 

Is  not  that  enquiry  a  'flash-light'  for 
the  soul? 

3 


Into  these  mysterious  relations  and 
influences  Time  and  Space  enter  not. 
Far  remote  is  the  little  monastery  at 
Zwolle,  and  five  centuries  have  passed 
since  the  meekest  of  pietists  put  aside 
his  pen,  but  if  there  is  in  this  world 
to-day  a  spiritual  influence  of  potent 
puissance  it  is  Thomas  of  Kempen's 
Imitatio  Christi.  The  serene  monk 
has  vanished,  and  only  Omniscience 
knoweth  what  argument  his  secluded 
life  hath  lent  to  the  variant  creeds  of 
millions,  who  are  now  his  'neighbors' 
in  that  Civitas  Dei  the  son  of  Monica 
has  made  known  to  us. 

Say  you,  All  that  was  so  long 
ago!  Well,  would  it  lose  anything 
of  its  mysteriousness  if  it  were 
of  this  downright  to-day?  That 
which  we  call  " to-day"  also  hath 
its  mysteries,  and  not  the  least 
of  them  is  this  interlinking  of  our 
4 


lives   through   and   by   these   occult 
influences. 

Here  we  are  gathered  to-night, 
some  five  hundred  and  twenty  years 
after  the  birth  of  Thomas  a  Kempis, 
avowing  his  influence  upon  our  lives. 
He  that  was  Thomas  a  Kempis  had 
lain  in  his  grave  twenty-one  years 
before  the  prow  of  the  Pinta  was 
pointed  towards  the  New  World,  yet 
here  are  we  upon  a  beautiful  pe 
ninsula  —  "Peninsulam  amoenam  " — 
therein,  and  actually  indebted  to  a 
lady  now  in  Italy,  and  whom  it  is 
little  likely  that  any  one  of  us  hath 
ever  met, — indebted,  I  say,  to  this 
remote  stranger  for  the  privilege  of 
reading  a  letter  written  fifty  years 
ago,  never  yet  published,  and  having 
an  interesting  bearing  upon  the  mat 
ter  that  you  have  come  together  to 
hear  about. 


"  145  Via  Rasella,  Rome, 
Dec'r  17,  1897. 

"  Really,  there  is  not  much  to  tell 
about  the  Froude  letter.  Miss  Sophia 
Thoreau  sent  for  me,  a  few  weeks 
before  her  death,  to  give  me  some 
last  instructions  and  to  ask  my  assis 
tance  in  distributing  personal  things; 
and  at  the  same  time  she  gave  me 
several  letters  for  myself,  among 
them  this,  knowing  that  I  would 
value  them  as  autographs. 

"My  impression  is  that  she  feared 
people  would  think  it  too  flattering, 
and  for  that  or  some  other  reason  she 
did  not  at  that  time  care  to  have  it 
published. 

"She  gave  me  other  letters  and 

manuscripts,  requesting  me  to  place 

them  with  my  own  hands  in  one  of 

the  trunks  deposited  in  the  Concord 

6 


Town  Library,  which  were  to  be 
passed  on  to  Mr.  Blake  (I  think  that 
was  his  name);  I  mean  Thoreau's 
literary  executor.  Had  she  wished 
this  letter  to  be  published  she  would 
undoubtedly  have  placed  it  with  the 
manuscripts  which  I  was  to  put  in 
one  of  the  boxes  from  which  Mr. 
Blake  was  to  select  material  for  pub 
lication. 

"I  once  showed  it  to  Mr.  Emer 
son,  who  thought  Mr.  Blake  should 
see  it  at  once;  but  as  it  was  given 
to  me  and  not  to  him,  and  as  I  felt 
certain  Miss  Thoreau  did  not  wish  it 
published  at  that  time,  I  did  not  act 
upon  this  advice. 

"I  have  often  wondered  why  she 
did  not  put  it  with  the  papers  which 
were  to  be  placed  in  the  box  of  man 
uscripts.  Her  action  was  no  doubt 
intentional,  as  we  read  the  letter  over 

7 


together  about  three  weeks  before 
her  death :  at  the  same  time,  I  think 
there  can  be  no  harm  in  publishing 
it  now." 

So  far  as  pertains  to  our  purpose 
to-night  I  might  go  on  at  once  to 
the  Froude  letter,  but  in  so  doing  I 
should  shirk  a  duty  to  the  dead,  for 
the  discharging  of  which  I  am  sure 
you  will  allow  me  a  few  moments. 

If  you  should  open  a  certain  Life 
of  Thoreau  you  could  read  therein, 
"Mrs.  Thoreau,  with  her  sister  Lou 
isa,  and  her  sisters-in-law,  Sarah, 
Maria,  and  Jane  Thoreau,  took  their 
share  in  the  village  bickerings";  and 
also  that  Mrs.  Thoreau  indulged  in 
"  sharp  and  sudden  flashes  of  gossip 
and  malice " :  this  and  much  else  that 
is  derogatory.  Now  Mrs.  Thoreau 
died  in  1873,  and  yet,  in  1897,  and 

8 


so  casually,  the  lady  whose  letter  I 
am  reading  thus  testifies  to  the  high 
quality  of  the  women  of  the  Thoreau 
family: 

"The  women  of  the  Thoreau  fam 
ily  seem  to  me  quite  as  remarkable 
as  the  men;  and  people  who  knew 
John  Thoreau  considered  him  even 
cleverer  and  more  promising  than 
Henry  and  greatly  lamented  his  un 
timely  death.  Certainly  both  Helen, 
whom  I  never  knew,  and  Sophia, 
whom  I  knew  well,  were  exception 
ally  clever  women.  Sophia  was  ex 
tremely  witty,  a  brilliant  conversa 
tionalist,  and  her  love  of  nature  made 
her  the  most  delightful  of  companions 
for  a  ramble  through  the  woods  and 
meadows. 

"  'Aunt  Maria'  was,  at  the  time  I 
knew  her, -a  sweet,  gentle  old  lady 

6  9 


who  occasionally  wrote  me  charm 
ing  letters.  Mrs.  Thoreau,  Henry's 
mother,  was  full  of  kind  feeling  for 
everybody,  and  had  a  generous,  help 
ful  spirit.  She  was  most  kind  to  all 
the  children  of  her  acquaintance, 
often  devising  entertainments  for 
them;  and  I  still  have  a  vivid  re 
collection  of  the  boxes  of  home-made 
sweets  she  used  to  send  to  me  when 
I  was  away  at  school." 

Are  you  quite  ready  to  believe 
that  "gossip  and  malice"  could  find 
an  abiding  place  in  such  a  heart  as 
this? 

Now  have  we  reached  the  letter 
written  when  Froude  had  burned  his 
ships  and  was  submitted  to  the  slings 
and  arrows  of  the  " black  dragoons" 
on  whom  John  Sterling  had  also 
turned  his  back. 

10 


Manchester,  September  3,  1849. 
Dear  Mr.  Thoreau: 

I  have  long  intended  to  write  to 
you,  to  thank  you  for  that  noble  ex 
pression  of  yourself  you  were  good 
enough  to  send  me.  I  know  not  why 
I  have  not  done  so;  except  from  a 
foolish  sense  that  I  should  not  write 
until  I  had  thought  of  something  to 
say  that  it  would  be  worth  your 
while  to  read. 

What  can  I  say  to  you  except  ex 
press  the  honour  and  the  love  I  feel 
for  you.  An  honour  and  a  love 
which  Emerson  taught  me  long  ago 
to  feel,  but  which  I  feel  now  lnot  on 
account  of  his  word,  but  because  I 
myself  have  read  and  know  you.' 

When  I  think  of  what  you  are — 
of  what  you  have  done  as  well  as 
what  you  have  written,  I  have  the 
11 


right  to  tell  you  that  there  is  no 
man  living  upon  this  earth  at  pres 
ent,  whose  friendship  or  whose  notice 
I  value  more  than  yours. 

What  are  these  words!  yet  I  wish 
ed  to  say  something — and  I  must  use 
words,  though  they  serve  but  seldom 
in  these  days  for  much  but  lies. 

In  your  book  and  in  one  other 
from  your  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
"Margaret"  I  see  hope  for  the  com 
ing  world;  all  else  which  I  have 
found  true  in  any  of  our  thinkers 
(or  even  yours]  is  their  flat  denial  of 
what  is  false  in  the  modern  popular 
jargon — but  for  their  positive  af 
firming  side,  they  do  but  fling  us 
back  upon  our  own  human  nature 
to  hold  on  by  that  with  our  own 
strength.  A  few  men  here  and  there 
do  this  as  the  later  Romans  did — 
but  mankind  cannot,  and  I  have  gone 

12 


, 

near  to  despair.  I  am  growing  not 
to  despair,  and  I  thank  you  for  a 
helping  hand. 

Well,  I  must  see  you  some  time 
or  other.  It  is  not  such  a  great  mat 
ter  with  these  steam  bridges.  I  wish 
to  shake  hands  with  you  and  look  a 
brave  man  in  the  face.  In  the  mean 
time  I  will  but  congratulate  you  on 
the  age  in  which  your  work  is  cast: 
the  world  has  never  seen  one  more 
pregnant. 

God  bless  you  ! 

Your  friend  (if  you  will  let  him 
call  you  so), 

J.  A.  Froude. 

There  is  so  much  between  the 
lines  here  that  one  must  go  back  to 
the  middle  of  the  present  century  for 
a  clue.  In  1849  Froude,  then  a  Fel 
low  of  Exeter  College,  Oxford,  pub- 

13 


lished  a  book — The  Nemesis  of  Faith 
— which,  immediately  following  in 
the  wake  of  the  "Oxford  Movement," 
gave  a  disagreeable  shock  to  Angli 
can  Churchmen,  lay  and  cleric.  The 
scholarly  Fellow  of  Exeter  College 
had  been  coquetting  with  Catholicism. 
He  had  managed  to  lose  the  faith  of 
his  fathers,  but  had  utterly  failed  to 
find  any  surrogate ;  before  him  surged 
a  weltering  waste,  pitiless  storm,  and 
blinding  darkness,  and  no  place  where 
on  to  plant  his  way-worn  feet. 

The  obnoxious  book  was  burned 
in  the  quadrangle  by  the  Senior  Fel 
low  of  Oriel  College;  uthe  old,  fa 
miliar  faces"  either  looked  askance  at 
the  audacious  doubter  or  were  wholly 
averted;  the  Quarterlies  were  flooded 
with  condemnatory  reviews,  in  which 
even  lay  journalism  participated, — 
and  this  in  America  as  well  as  Great 

14 


Britain, — and  the  author's  every  hope 
of  place  and  preferment  in  the  Estab 
lished  Church  perished  beyond  all 
expectation  of  resurrection:  for  him 
there  was  no  "benefit  of  the  clergy." 
It  was  a  pitiful  immolation,  because 
a  self-immolation.  As  Carlyle  grimly 
told  Froude — he  should  have  "  burned 
his  own  smoke." 

The  Nemesis  of  Faith  is  not  a 
wholesome  book  to  read,  because  it 
is  not  the  doubt  that  is  born  of  men 
tal  and  therefore  spiritual  health. 
One  need  only  read  Froude's  previ 
ous  publication,  The  Shadows  of  the 
Clouds,  to  discover  the  morbid  mind. 
The  Nemesis  of  Faith  is  wholly  de 
structive — and  in  such  high  matters 
it  is  so  fatally  easy  to  destroy — it  has 
not  the  shadow  of  an  endeavor  to 
provide  a  shelter  for  the  soul:  that  is 
left  naked,  houseless,  and  homeless  to 

15 


the  pitiless  peltings  of  the  storm  of 
doubt  and  unbelief.  It  was  a  moral 
suicide  in  a  moment  of  desperate 
aberration, — a  soul's  tragedy. 

Emerson  knew  some  time  before 
that  something  of  this  nature  was  im 
minent.  He  wrote  in  his  journal  for 
April,  1848:  "I  had  an  old  invita 
tion  from  Mr.  Clough,  a  Fellow  of 
Oriel,  and  last  week  I  had  a  new  one 
from  Dr.  Daubeny,  the  botanical  pro 
fessor.  I  went  on  Thursday.  I  was 
housed  close  upon  Oriel,  though  not 
within  it,  but  I  lived  altogether  upon 
college  hospitalities,  dining  at  Exeter 
College  with  Palgrave,  Froude,  and 
other  Fellows,  and  breakfasting  next 
morning  at  Oriel  with  Clough,  Dr. 
Daubeny,  etc.  They  all  showed  me 
the  kindest  attentions,  ....  but, 
much  more,  they  showed  me  them 
selves;  who  are  so  many  of  them 

16 


very  earnest,  faithful,  affectionate, 
some  of  them  highly  gifted  men; 
some  of  them,  too,  prepared  to  make 
great  sacrifices  for  conscience's  sake. 
Froude  is  a  noble  youth  to  whom  my 
heart  warms;  I  shall  soon  see  him 
again.  Truly  I  became  fond  of  these 
monks  of  Oxford." 

Evidently  there  was  one  man  in 
America  to  whom  the  devastating 
Nemesis  of  Faith  did  not  come  as  a 
surprise. 

Of  course  Thoreau  learned  of 
Froude  from  Emerson's  lips,  and 
read  Emerson's  copy  of  that  "  incen 
diary"  book.  That  Thoreau  should 
send  Froude  a  copy  of  his  own  first 
book — then  falling  still-born  from 
Munroe's  press — was  only  natural, 
considering  the  downrightness  of  that 
chapter  in  the  work  fancifully  termed 
"Sunday."  Froude's  letter  to  Thoreau 

c  17 


is  the  acknowledgment  of  the  gift, 
and  what  an  acknowledgment:  "I 
have  a  right  to  tell  you  that  there 
is  no  man  living  upon  this  earth  at 
present,  whose  friendship  or  whose 
notice  I  value  more  than  yours." 

These  men  had  so  much  in  com 
mon.  Thoreau  also  had  forsaken  the 
faith  of  his  fathers;  but  a  serener 
'pagan'  never  shattered  the  shrines 
of  the  Saints.  He  could  say,  as  an 
other  of  our  latter-day  renunciants 
has  said,  "I  need  no  assurances,  I 
am  a  man  who  is  preoccupied  of  his 
own  soul." 

Thoreau  was  too  solidly  self-centred 
to  need  assurances;  yet  he  had  be 
come  an  author,  and,  being  flesh  and 
blood,  his  heart  went  out  to  his  book 
as  doth  a  mother's  to  her  first-born. 
But  howsoever  interpenetrated  by  a 
conviction,  howsoever  possessed  by 

18 


% 

it,  howsoever  driven  by  it,  even  to 
the  forsaking  of  all  that  makes  life 
dear,  howsoever  swerveless  and  in 
domitable  in  service  thereto,  never 
theless  the  solitary  Thinker  becomes 
as  an  armed  host  so  soon  as  his  con 
viction  is  shared  by  another.  "I  have 
gone  near  to  despair.  I  am  growing 
not  to  despair,  and  I  thank  you  for  a 
helping  hand."  Such  is  the  assurance 
that  this  long-hidden  letter  earned  to 
Thoreau.  His  still-born  book  had 
found  one  fellow-man  who  believed 
it.  One  can  readily  imagine  Thoreau 
reading  that  old  letter  in  the  leafy 
solitude  of  Walden  woods,  and  the 
thought  of  his  heart  is  written  upon 
his  sunburnt  face:  "My  book  may 
be  a  sealed  volume  to  the  multitude, 
'  caviare  to  the  general/  but  here  is 
one  to  whom  it  is  intelligible,  speak 
ing  audibly  to  the  soul  of  him.  It  is 

19 


enough  if  the  book  were  written  for 
him  alone:  is  not  every  true  book 
written  for  only  him  who  can  under 
stand  its  message?" 

Froude  had  written,  "  I  congratulate 
you  on  the  age  in  which  your  work 
is  cast."  Never  did  any  compliment 
go  farther  astray.  Thoreau  had  been 
obliged  to  publish  at  his  own  risk, 
and  he  had  gone  deeply  into  debt  for 
the  edition  of  one  thousand  volumes. 
Little  heed  did  the  'age'  take  of  his 
'cast.' 

Four  years  after  the  date  of 
Froude's  assuring  letter,  Thoreau 
wrote  in  his  journal:  "For  a  year 
or  two  past  my  publisher,  falsely  so 
called,  has  been  writing  from  time  to 
time  to  ask  what  disposition  should 
be  made  of  the  copies  of  A  Week  on 
the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Rivers 
still  on  hand,  and  at  last  suggesting 

20 


'* 

that  he  had  use  for  the  room  they  oc 
cupied  in  his  cellar.  So  I  had  them 
all  sent  to  me  here,  and  they  have 
arrived  to-day  hy  express,  filling  the 
man's  wagon,  706  copies  out  of  an 
edition  of  1000,  which  I  bought  of 
Munroe  four  years  ago,  and  have 
been  ever  since  paying  for  and  have 
not  quite  paid  for  yet.  The  wares 
are  sent  to  me  at  last,  and  I  have  an 
opportunity  to  examine  my  purchase. 
They  are  something  more  substantial 
than  fame,  as  my  back  knows,  which 
has  borne  „  them  up  two  flights  of 
stairs  to  a  place  similar  to  that  to 
which  they  trace  their  origin.  Of  the 
remaining  290  and  odd,  75  were 
given  away,  the  rest  sold.  I  now 
have  a  library  of  nearly  900  volumes, 
over  700  of  which  I  wrote  myself. 
Is  it  not  well  that  the  author  should 
behold  the  fruits  of  his  labor?  My 
21 


works  are  piled  up  on  one  side  of  my 
chamber  as  high  as  my  head,  my 
opera  omnia.  This  is  authorship, 
these  are  the  works  of  my  brain. 
There  was  just  one  piece  of  good 
luck  in  the  venture.  The  unbound 
copies  were  tied  up  by  the  printer 
four  years  ago  in  stout  paper  wrap 
pers,  and  inscribed:  — 

H.  D.  Thoreau, 
Concord  River, 
50  cops. 

» 

so  Munroe  had  only  to  cross  out 
"River"  and  write  "Mass.,"  and  de 
liver  them  to  the  express-man  at 
once.  I  can  now  see  what  I  write 
for,  the  result  of  my  labors.  Never 
theless  in  spite  of  this  result,  sitting 
beside  the  inert  mass  of  my  works,  I 
take  up  my  pen  to-night  to  record 

22 


g  W 

a   2 


P^ 

CD 

CT5* 


=" 

5 

s' 


o    & 

^    CD 


W  £ 

CD      5 


r 

3 
p 


g   g 


^      CD        H- i. 

§ir^ 
1139 

Mrs 

?« ^ 


CD 

O 


% 

what  thought  or  experience  I  may 
have  had,  with  as  much  satisfaction 
as  ever.  Indeed  I  believe  that  the 
result  is  more  inspiring  and  better  for 
me  than  if  a  thousand  had  bought 
my  wares.  It  affects  my  privacy 
less  and  leaves  me  freer." 

From  all  that  I  can  learn  of  Tho- 
reau,  I  find  no  reason  to  doubt  the 
sincerity  of  this  imperturbability.  I 
believed  it  to  be  sincere  before  I 
knew  of  the  Froude  letter;  I  am  as 
sured  of  it  now  that  I  have  read  it. 
Such  are  the  secret  sustainments  of 
the  Thinker,  and  such  sustainments 
should  be  and  ever  will  be  vouch 
safed;  for  is  not  he  who  brings  a 
message  to  men  an  Ambassador  from 
the  Most  High,  and  do  not  even  the 
ravens  feed  such  Ministers  Plenipo 
tentiary? 


23 


The  assurance  of  the  Fellow  of 
Exeter  College  was  grateful  to  the 
graduate  of  Harvard;  but  Belief  is 
not  the  accident  of  a  diploma  or  the 
prerogative  of  the  aristocracy  of  Let 
ters.  Thoreau  was  to  have  another 
assurance,  dearer  no  doubt  to  him  be 
cause  its  source  was  so  much  nearer 
the  soil.  • 


24 


II. 

THE  BEOTHEE  AND  SISTEE. 

IN  one  of  the  quietest  of  American 
villages  there  dwelt  an  earnest 
reader  of  the  Weekly  Tribune  in 
the  days  when  Horace  Greeley  was 
at  his  best.  In  one  issue  thereof 
he  found  George  Ripley's  review  of 
Thoreau's  second  book,  Walden,  or, 
Life  in  the  Woods.  The  reviewer 
had  made  many  lengthy  citations 
from  this  most  awakening  work,  and 
the  reading  of  these  set  aflame  the 
heart  of  the  distant  reader.  He 
wrote  to  the  publishers  for  and  ob 
tained  a  copy.  From  the  title-page 
of  Walden  he  learned  that  Thoreau 
was  also  the  author  of  another  book, 
the  still-born  Week  on  the  Concord 

d  25 


and  Merrimack  Rivers.  This  parti 
cular  work  the  Michigan  man  soon 
found  that  he  could  not  get  from  the 
publishers  of  Walden,  nor  could  they 
inform  him  where  it  might  be  had,  so 
utterly  had  Munroe's  publication  dis 
appeared  from  the  market.  But  the 
tang  of  Walden  had  "  touched  the 
spot"  and  the  hungry  man  was  ra 
venous  for  a  taste  of  the  Week.  He 
had  to  write  to  Thoreau  himself  ask 
ing  where  that  book  could  be  bought; 
and  thus  began  the  correspondence, 
which  I  shall  read  with  whatever  of 
explanation  I  may  be  able  to  give. 

Please  bear  in  mind  the  situation: 
piled  up  in  that  garret-chamber,  'as 
high  as  my  head,'  are  the  seven  hun 
dred  rejected  books — cast  into  the 
"age"  and  by  it  most  unmistakably 
cast  out.  Four  years  had  they  lain 
in  Munroe's  cellar, — more  than  once 

26 


had  he  tried  to  get  rid  of  them,  and 
at  last  had  'suggested7  that  while 
there  appeared  to  be  no  earthly  use 
for  them,  he,  James  Munroe,  'had  use 
for  the  room  they  occupied  in  his  cel 
lar.'  For  two  years  and  two  months 
had  they  found  friendly  shelter  in  the 
garret  of  John  Thoreau.  Behold !  an 
enthusiastic  letter  from  a  distant  stran 
ger;  one  man  who  will  not  rest  until 
he  has  read  the  ignored  Week.  Ob 
serve,  if  you  please,  the  quiet  calm  of 
Thoreau's  reply. 

Concord,  Jan.  ISth,  1856. 
Dear  Sir: 

I  am  glad  to  hear  that  my  "  Wai- 
den"  has  interested  you — that  per 
chance  it  holds  some  truth  still  as 
far  off  as  Michigan.  I  thank  you 
for  your  note. 

The  "  Week"  had  so  poor  a  pub- 
27 


Usher  that  it  is  quite  uncertain  whe 
ther  you  will  find  it  in  any  shop.  I 
am  not  sure  but  authors  must  turn 
booksellers  themselves.  The  price  is 
$  1.25.  If  you  care  enough  for  it  to 
send  me  that  sum  by  mail  (stamps 
will  do  for  change),  I  will  forward 
you  a  copy  by  the  same  conveyance. 
As  for  the  "more"  that  is  to  come, 
I  cannot  speak  definitely  at  present, 
but  I  trust  that  the  mine — be  it  silver 
or  lead — is  not  yet  exhausted.  At 
any  rate,  I  shall  be  encouraged  by 
the  fact  that  you  are  interested  in  its 
yield.  Yours  respectfully, 

Henry  D.  Thoreau. 

["So  poor  a  publisher,"  indeed.  It 
was  this  same  James  Munroe  that 
published  Emerson's  Nature;  and  it 
took  him  twelve  years  to  sell  an  edi 
tion  of  five  hundred  copies.  Verily, 

28 


"  authors  must  turn  booksellers  them 
selves."  "The  price  is  $1.25."  A 
copy  of  the  first  edition  of  Thoreau's 
Week  for  one  dollar  and  twenty-five 
cents!  Go  to,  thou  author-bookseller, 
thou  art  not  up  to  the  trade  values  of 
books!  Every  one  of  the  very  vol 
umes  that  James  Munroe  had  no 
'room'  for,  now  finds  warm  welcome 
to  the  selectest  of  private  libraries  at 
— eighteen  dollars  a  copy!  If  the 
reader  wishes  to  recognize  those  cop 
ies  which  were  bought  from  Thoreau 
himself  he  will  turn  to  page  396.  On 
the  bottom  margin  he  will  find  six 
lines  written  in  pencil  and  by  Tho 
reau  himself:  the  addition  being  so 
much  of  the  original  text  as  was 
overlooked  by  the  compositor. — ED.] 

It  is  hardly  fair  that  I  should  go 
any  farther-  until   I   have   told   you 

29 


some  little  about  Thoreau's  Michi 
gan  correspondent.  He  was  born  in 
1817,  the  same  year  as  Thoreau,  and 
was  once  a  student  at  Oberlin,  Ohio. 
"They  wanted  to  make  a  ' preacher' 
of  me,"  said  he — quickly  adding  in 
the  manner  of  one  who  has  just 
missed  a  peril,  "Gracious!  I  had  a 
narrow  escape."  In  fact,  my  aged 
friend  has  all  the  qualifications  for 
Thoreau's  'Sunday  School.'  Pity  it 
is,  but  his  'doxy  is  not  Orthodoxy  be 
cause  it  is  n't  your  'doxy.  His  is  the 
doubt  that  is  born  of  the  supremest 
humility.  Pew  indeed  are  they  that 
understand  it ;  but  it  matters  not. 
Whosoever  has  read  Walden  will 
readily  understand  what  that  book 
had  in  it  for  the  "wandering  sheep" 
that  had  escaped  from  the  Oberlin 
fold;  they  will  as  readily  imagine 
with  what  haste  he  forwarded  the 

30 


one  dollar  and  a  quarter  for  a  copy 
of  the  Week. 

Concord,  Feb.  10,  '56. 
Dear  Sir: 

I  forwarded  to  you  by  mail  on 
the  31st  of  January  a  copy  of  my 
"  Week"  post  paid,  which  I  trust 
that  you  have  received.  I  thank  you 
heartily  for  the  expression  of  your 
interest  in  "  Walden"  and  hope  that 
you  will  not  be  disappointed  by  the 
"  Week"  You  ask  how  the  former 
has  been  received.  It  has  found  an 
audience  of  excellent  character,  and 
quite  numerous,  some  2000  copies 
having  been  dispersed.  I  should  con 
sider  it  a  greater  success  to  interest 
one  wise  and  earnest  soul,  than  a 
million  unwise  and  frivolous. 

You  may  rely  on  it  that  you  have 
the  best  of  me  in  my  books,  and  that 
31 


/  am  not  worth  seeing  personally, 
the  stuttering,  blundering  clod-hopper 
that  I  am.  Even  poetry,  you  know, 
is  in  one  sense  an  infinite  brag  and 
exaggeration.  Not  that  I  do  not 
stand  on  all  that  I  have  written  — 
but  what  am  I  to  the  truth  I  feebly 
utter! 

I  like  the  name  of  your  county — 
may  it  grow  men  as  sturdy  as  its 
trees.  Methinks  I  hear  your  flute 
echo  amid  the  oaks.  Is  not  yours, 
too,  a  good  place  to  study  theology? 
I  hope  that  you  will  erelong  recover 
your  turtle-dove,  and  that  it  may 
bring  you  glad  tidings  out  of  that 
heaven  in  which  it  disappeared. 
Yours  sincerely, 

Henry  D.  Thoreau. 

["I  am  not  sure  but  authors  must 
turn  booksellers  themselves."  Indeed! 

32 


"I  should  consider  it  a  greater  success 
to  interest  one  wise  and  earnest  soul 
than  a  million  unwise  and  frivolous!" 
No  wonder  that  James  Munroe  had 
not  cellar-room  for  the  books  of  such 
a  "stuttering,  blundering  clod-hop 
per."— ED.] 

After  reading  the  Week  the  Michi 
gan  man  wished  to  share  the  good  tid 
ings  of  great  joy  with  others.  There 
was  a  distant  relation,  an  upright 
member  of  an  orthodox  sect;  he  must 
have  a  copy  of  the  Week:  it  may 
show  him  how  fast  asleep  he  is!  The 
book  was  mailed  to  the  somnolent 
saint  from  Thoreau  direct;  but  it  had 
been  as  well  to  have  sent  a  copy  of 
Eliots  Indian  Bible. 

My  aged  friend  chuckles  when  he 
tells  you  that  this  very  copy  of  the 
Week  was  subsequently  borrowed  by 

6  33 


a  Presbyterian  preacher  and — never 
returned! 

On  the  same  occasion  a  copy  of 
both  Walden  and  the  Week  were 
ordered  for  a  brother  in  California. 
These  arrived  safely;  and  they  were 
read  and  pondered  under  the  shade 
of  the  great  Sequoias,  in  the  silence 
of  the  forest  primeval.  Both  author 
and  reader  are  long  since  where  no 
shadows  cloud  the  page.  In  the  lu 
men  siccum  of  Eternity  the  Thinker 
has  learned  "what  argument  his  life 
to  his  brother's  creed  had  lent." 

Concord,  May  31st,  '56. 
Dear  Sir: 

I  forwarded  by  mail  a  copy  of  my 
"  Week" post  paid  to  .  .  .  .  ,  accord 
ing  to  your  order,  about  ten  days  ago, 
or  on  the  receit  [sic]  of  your  note. 
I  will  obtain  and  forward  a  copy 
34 


'  of  "  Walden  "  and  also  of  the  "  Week" 
to  California,  to  your  order,  post 
paid,  for  $2.60.  The  postage  will  be 
between  60  and  70  cents. 

I  thank  you  heartily  for  your  kind 
intentions  respecting  me.  The  West 
has  many  attractions  for  me,  parti 
cularly  the  lake  country  and  the  In 
dians,  yet  I  do  foresee  what  my  en 
gagements  may  be  in  the  fall.  I 
have  once  or  twice  came  near  going 
West  a-lecturing,  and  perhaps  some 
winter  may  bring  me  into  your  neigh 
borhood :  in  which  case  I  should 
probably  see  you.  Yet  lecturing  has 
commonly  proved  so  foreign  and  irk 
some  to  me,  that  I  think  I  could  only 
use  it  to  acquire  the  means  with 
which  to  make  an  independent  tour 
another  time. 

As  for  my  pen,  I  can  say  that  it 
is  not  altogether  idle,  though  I  have 

35 


finished  nothing  new  in  the  book 
form.  I  am  drawing  a  rather  long 
bow,  though  it  may  be  a  feeble  one, 
but  I  pray  that  the  archer  may  re 
ceive  new  strength  before  the  arrow 
is  shot. 

With  many  thanks,  yours  truly, 

Henry  D.  Thoreau. 

When  forwarding  the  money  for 
the  last  books  ordered,  a  likeness  of 
Thoreau  was  solicited,  and  having 
learned  in  some  way  that  Thoreau 
was  "poor,"  a  five-dollar  bill  was 
enclosed  in  payment  for  the  books 
and  the  desired  picture,  and  it  was 
requested  that  Thoreau  should  keep 
the  balance  "for  his  trouble."  The 
reply  to  this  kindly  device  is  charac 
teristic. 


36 


Henry  D.  Thoreau,  age  39. 

From  a  daguerreotype  by  B.  D.  Maxham,  of 
"Worcester,  Mass.,  taken  in  1856. 


Concord,  Saturday,  June  2lst,  '56. 
Dear  Sir: 

On  the   12   ult.  I  forwarded  the 
two   books   to    California,   observing 
your  directions  in  every  particular, 
and  I  trust  that  Uncle  Sam  will  dis 
charge  his  duty  faithfully.     While  in 
Worcester  this  week  I  obtained  the 
accompanying  daguerreotype — which 
my  friends  think  is  pretty  good — 
though  better  looking  than  I. 
Books  and  postage     .     .     $2.64 
Daguerreotype  ...         .50 
Postage      ....         .16 

3.30 
500 

3  30          You  will  accordingly 
find  1  70  enclosed  with  my  shadow. 
Yrs 

Henry  D.  Thoreau. 


37 


Thoreau  had  a  poor  throat  for 
charity  soup,  no  matter  how  taste 
fully  it  had  been  flavored.  "  Books 
and  postage,  $2.64;  Daguerreotype 
and  its  postage,  .66;  Total,  $3.30. 
Balance  due  you  $1.70,  and  you  will 
accordingly  find  $1.70  enclosed  with 
my  shadow."  This  holograph  pre 
sents  the  poorest  chirography  of  them 
all,  the  signature  differing  markedly 
from  all  the  others.  Yes,  there  was 
a  shadow  on  his  face  when  he  wrote, 
for  this  is  the  only  letter  signed, 
curtly  enough,  "Yrs."  instead  of  the 
accustomed  "Yours  truly"  or  "sin 
cerely." 

A  little  matter,  do  you  say?  Pre 
cisely  ;  but  did  it  never  occur  to  you 
that  the  significances  of  life  are  in 
just  its  "little  matters"?  It  is  what 
we  do  and  how,  when  not  the  great 
world  is  the  spectator,  but  when  the 

38 


self  is  alone  with  the  selfhood;  then 
the  undertone  of  character  is  heard, 
the  'still  small  voice'  speaking  audi 
bly  to  the  soul  above  all  the  roaring 
din  of  the  mighty  Babylon  of  which 
so  many  of  us  are  in  such  cowardly 
dread. 

That  now  aged  man  with  whom 
Thoreau  was  then  corresponding  is 
indeed  a  most  remarkable  man.  But 
I  question  if  he  is  at  all  adapted  for 

the  latitude  and  longitude  of 

[The  editor  takes  the  liberty  of  sup 
pressing  the  name.]  No;  we  are  like 
the  Baltimore  oysters  labelled  "extra 
selects."  We  should  only  mortify 
in  a  can  of  common  oysters;  so  we 
have  an  uncommon  can  of  our  own. 
The  name,  it  is  true,  isn't  'blown  in 
the  bottle';  but  it  is  stamped  on  our 
"tin."  I  do  not  believe  we  would 
allow  such  an  one  as  Thoreau's  corre- 

39 


spondent  in  our  select  can ;  nor  do  I 
believe  Thoreau  would  have  written 
a  line  to  an  "extra  select."  How 
ever,  this  sterling  man,  who  owes 
little  to  the  school  and  less  to  the 
college,  had  vouchsafed  unto  him  the 
divine  gift  of  insight.  He  is  one  of 
that  rare  few  who  are  endowed  with 
prescient  foresight;  most  of  us  have 
only  a  purblind  hindsight.  We  see 
the  landscapes  of  life  only  after  they 
have  been  passed,  we  discern  the 
great  ones  of  life  only  after  they  are 
dead — we  are  the  "extra  selects"! 

[The  editor  is  utterly  unable  to  ac 
count  for  this  rude  and  wholly  un 
warrantable  outburst.  Not  a  city  of 
its  size  contains  more  people  that  are 
'nice  to  know';  not  any  the  largest 
city  outdoes  it  in  culture  and  elegant 
refinement  The  ex-professor  was 

40 


recently  asked  if  he  did  not  mean 
that  we  are  the  "  extra  elects."  His 
reply  is  not  adapted  for  polite  ears. 
Though  it  may  cost  him  the  friend 
ship  of  the  ex-professor,  the  editor 
trusts  that  he,  at  least,  has  done  his 
duty  to  Society.] 

Thoreau's  meaning  in  this  universe 
is  no  more  a  secret  to  this  untutored 
man  dwelling  in  remote  Michigan 
than  it  was  to  the  learned  Fellow  of 
Exeter  College  or  to  that  graduate  of 
Harvard  who  pitched  his  tent  in  Con 
cord  and  taught  America  to  think. 
Can  you  imagine  what  it  implies  to 
have  "discovered"  Thoreau  in  those 
early  days;  or  do  you  imagine  that 
Nature's  "extra  selects"  are  marked 
with  a  stencil-plate?  Try  and  im 
agine  what  a  consuming  fervor  is 
enkindled  when  a  true  Book  is  speak- 
/  41 


ing  to  the  soul  of  a  man — his  heart 
with  hero-worship  all  aflame.  If  you 
have  been  capable  of  doing  this,  then 
you  can  conceive  what  fervid  letters 
were  sent,  in  those  earlier  days,  from 
one  earnest  man  in  the  distant  West 
to  that  imperturbable  and  self-pos 
sessed  man  in  "old  Concord,"  and 
that  conception  will  invest  the  next 
of  Thoreau's  letters  with  something 
deeper  than  the  mere  surface-reading 
shows. 

Concord,  July  8th,  '57. 
Dear  Sir: 

You  are  right  in  supposing  that  I 
have  not  been  Westward.  I  am  very 
little  of  a  traveller.  I  am  gratified 
to  hear  of  the  interest  you  take  in 
my  books;  it  is  additional  encourage 
ment  to  write  more  of  them.  Though 


42 


my  pen  is  not  idle,  I  have  not  pub 
lished  anything  for  a  couple  of  years 
at  least.  I  like  a  private  life,  and 
cannot  bear  to  have  the  public  in  my 
mind. 

You  will  excuse  me  for  not  re 
sponding  more  heartily  to  your  notes, 
since  I  realize  what  an  interval  there 
always  is  between  the  actual  and  im 
agined  author  and  feel  that  it  would 
not  be  just  for  me  to  appropriate  the 
sympathy  and  good  will  of  my  un 
seen  readers. 

Nevertheless,  I  should  like  to  meet 
you,  and  if  I  ever  come  into  your 
neighborhood  shall  endeavor  to  do  so. 
Can't  you  tell  the  world  of  your 
life  also?  Then  I  shall  know  you, 
at  least  as  well  as  you  me. 
Yours  truly, 

Henry  D.  Thoreau. 


43 


They  never  met  in  the  flesh ;  but 
there  is  an  old  man  in  the  West  pa 
tiently  waiting  for  a  meeting  where 
heart  answers  unto  heart  as  face  unto 
face  in  the  refiner's  silver. 

An  unbroken  silence  of  more  than 
two  years  followed  this  last  letter.  In 
the  interval  America  was  preparing 
to  make  history;  chapters  that  should 
be  written  with  her  best  blood  and 
the  first  page  with  that  of  a  hero — 
a  man  in  whom  was  incarnated  the 
high  purpose  of  the  Lord  God  Om 
nipotent. 

There,  in  Virginia,  Captain  John 
Brown  lay  captive,  "  wounded  and  in 
prison."  Even  an  Abolition  paper 
called  him  a  ' madman'  for  that 
which  he  had  tried  to  do.  The 
doughfaces  of  the  North  sweat  clam 
mily;  the  " friends  of  the  Union" 
trembled  for  the  safety  of  that  fabric ; 

44 


universal  consternation  petrified  the 
people.  In  that  supreme  moment 
a  single  voice  was  lifted  up  in  the 
vestry-room  of  the  little  church  in 
Concord  wherein  the  first  American 
Congress  had  held  solemn  delibera 
tions.  It  was  a  voice  that  spake  un 
der  a  protest  in  which  joined  alike 
Whig,  Democrat,  and  Abolitionist. 
"That  speech  should  not  be  uttered; 
it  is  unwise,  injudicious;  it  will  do 
more  harm  than  good,"  etc.,  etc.  "I 
did  not  send  to  you  for  advice,  but  to 
announce  that  I  am  to  speak" — and 
speak  he  did.  It  was  Sunday  even 
ing,  the  thirtieth  of  October.  The 
very  next  evening  that  intrepid  voice 
was  heard  again,  in  Tremont  Temple, 
and  yet  again  in  Worcester  on  the 
Wednesday  following.  It  was  the 
voice  of  one  man;  one  man  in  fifty 
millions  having  the  courage  of  his 

45 


convictions;  one  man  God-appointed 
to  show  a  nation  its  way  as  the  dark 
ness  was  gathering  around  it  and 
not  a  politician  had  the  courage  to 
strike  a  match  to  light  the  flickering 
tallow-dip  of  Policy. 

The  Western  man  read  accounts  of 
this  one  fearless  voice,  and  wrote  to 
Thoreau  asking  for  the  words  he 
alone  had  dared  to  speak. 

Concord,  Nov.  24th,  '59. 
Dear  Sir: 

The  lectures  which  you  refer  to 
were  reported  in  the  newspapers,  after 
a  fashion.  The  last  one  in  some  half 
dozen  of  them,  and  if  I  possessed 
one,  or  all,  I  would  send  them  to 
you,  bad  as  they  are.  The  best,  or 
at  least  longest  one  of  the  Boston 
Lecture  was  in  the  Boston  "Atlas 
and  Bee"  of  Nov.  2nd. — may  be 

46 


half  the  whole  [speech].  There  were 
others  in  the  "  Traveller,"  the  "  Jour 
nal,"  (fee.,  of  the  same  date. 

I  am  glad  to  know  that  you  are 
interested  to  see  my  things,  and  I 
wish  I  had  them  in  printed  form  to 
send  to  you.  I  exerted  myself  con 
siderably  to  get  the  last  discourse 
printed  and  sold  for  the  benefit  of 
Browrfs  family — but  the  publishers 
are  afraid  of  pamphlets,  and  it  is 
now  too  late. 

I  return  the  stamps  which  I  have 
not  used. 

I  shall  be  glad  to  see  you  if  I  ever 
come  your  way. 

Yours  truly, 

Henry  D.  Thoreau. 

This  holograph  is  very  striking  in 
its  mute  significance.  The  words 
seemed  to  leap  from  Thoreau's  pen. 

47 


In  fifteen  different  instances  two 
words  are  written  without  taking  the 
pen  from  the  paper,  in  eight  others 
three  are  thus  continuously  written, 
and  in  one  line  there  are  four  impe 
tuously  chained  together.  There  is 
nothing  of  this  in  the  other  five 
holographs.  But,  curiously,  the  sig 
nature  to  this  last  is  the  largest,  bold 
est,  clearest,  and  by  far  the  best  of 
them  all.  It  reminds  one  of  John 
Hancock's  sign-manual  on  the  De 
claration  of  Independence.  Surely, 
Massachusetts  writes  a  fine  hand  on 
occasion ! 

There  remained  for  Thoreau  only 
two  years  and  a  half  of  his  Lehrjahre: 
then  he  was  " translated."  Trans 
lated?  Do  they  not  say  that  of  a 
Bishop  when  he  is  exalted?  Even 
so;  but  is  not  Thoreau  also  a  " bishop 
of  souls"?  There  is  now  no  obscur- 

48 


ing  rafter  between  him  and  the  Un 
speakable  One  who  clothed  him  in 
clay  that  he  might  do  his  appointed 
work  in  the  Universe — this  little 
world  his  seed-field.  Yes,  it  is  the 
right  word;  it  is  his  sorrowing  sis 
ter's  word.  He  was  "translated"  one 
beautiful  Spring  morning.  It  was  on 
the  sixth  of  May,  1862. 

And  now  that  sister  is  the  Concord 
correspondent  of  him  who  long  had 
waited  and  hoped  for  Thoreau  to 
"come  this  way." 

Concord,  June  24th,  1862. 
Dear  Sir: 

It  gives  me  pleasure  to  acknow 
ledge  your  note  of  the  18th  itistant, 
and  I  desire  to  thank  you  for  the 
very  friendly  sympathy  which  you 
have  manifested  for  us  in  this  season 
of  sorrow  and  affliction, 
g  49 


My  mother  and  myself  are  the 
only  surviving  members  of  a  fam 
ily  once  numbering  six.  My  elder 
brother,  for  whom  you  enquire,  died 
twenty  years  ago,  next  a  precious 
sister  was  called,  and  three  years 
since  my  dear  Father  left  us. 

My  brother  Henry's  illness  com 
menced  a  year  ago  last  December. 
During  seventeen  months  never  a 
murmur  escaped  him.  I  wish  that 
I  could  describe  the  wonderful  sim 
plicity  and  child-like  trust  with 
which  he  accepted  every  experience. 
As  he  said,  "he  never  met  with  a 
disappointment  in  his  life,  because  he 
always  arranged  so  as  to  avoid  it." 
"He  learned  when  he  was  a  very 
little  boy  that  he  must  die,  and  of 
course  he  was  not  disappointed  when 
his  time  came."  Indeed  we  cannot 


50 


fed  that  lie  has  died,  but  rather  [has] 
been  translated. 

On  one  occasion  he  remarked  to 
me  that  he  considered  perfect  disease 
as  agreeable  as  perfect  health,  since 
the  mind  always  conformed  to  the 
condition  of  the  body. 

I  never  knew  any  one  who  set  so 
great  a  value  on  Time  as  did  my 
brother;  he  continued  to  busy  him 
self  all  through  his  sickness,  and  dur 
ing  the  last  few  months  of  his  life  he 
edited  many  papers  for  the  press, 
and  he  did  not  cease  to  call  for  his 
manuscripts  till  the  last  day  of  his 
life.* 

While  we  suffer  an  irreparable 
loss  in  the  departure  of  my  most 

*  "  No  man  ever  lived  who  paid  more  ardent 
and  unselfish  attention  to  his  business." 

John  Weiss. 


51 


gifted  brother,  still  we  are  comforted 
and  cheered  by  the  memory  of  his 
pure  and  virtuous  soul;  and  it  is  a 
great  consolation  to  know  that  he 
possessed  a  spirit  so  attuned  to  the 
beauties  and  harmonies  of  Nature 
that  the  color  of  the  sky,  the  fra 
grance  of  the  flowers  and  the  music 
of  the  birds  ministered  unceasingly 
to  his  pleasure.  He  was  the  hap 
piest  of  mortals.  This  world  a  par 
adise.  "  Where  there  is  knowledge, 
where  there  is  virtue,  where  there  is 
beauty,  where  there  is  progress,  there 
is  now  his  home" 

You  ask  the  name  of  my  brother's 
traveling  companion.  Mr.  .  .  .  ,  a 
near  neighbor  and  intimate  friend, 
most  frequently  accompanied  him 
in  his  walks.  In  the  lines  on  page 
twenty-second  of  "The  Week"  you 


52 


Henry  D.  Thoreau,  age  37. 

From  a  crayon  portrait  drawn  in  1854  by  Samuel  W.  Rowse. 
The  original  is  in  the  Concord  Free  Library. 


will  find  a  reference  to  this  same 
friend.  Mr.  .  .  .  wrote  the  lines 
sung  at  my  brother's  funeral.  So 
sincere  is  his  friendship  for  Henry, 
that,  I  doubt  not,  any  token  of  esteem 
you  may  bestow  for  his  sake,  upon 
him,  will  be  acceptable. 

Within  a  few  weeks  we  have  had 
some  photographs  taken  from  a 
crayon  portrait  of  my  brother.  The 
crayon  drawing  was  made  two  years 
before  Henry  sent  you  his  Dauguer- 
reotype.  Will  you  accept  the  inclosed 
picture?  His  friends  all  consider 
it  an  excellent  likeness.  My  mother 
unites  with  me  in  very  kind  regards 
to  yourself.  It  would  afford  us  plea 
sure  to  see  you  at  any  time.  Concord 
is  the  home  of  many  worthies,  Em 
erson,  Alcott,  Hawthorne,  Channing, 
&c.,  all  valued  friends  of  my  brother. 


53 


/  trust  that  you  may  be  attracted  to 
this  neighborhood. 

Yours  very  truly, 

S.  E.  Thoreau. 

P.  S.  I  received,  by  to-day's  mail, 
a  very  appreciative  notice  of  my 
brother  from  the  pen  of  Storrow 
Higginson,  formerly  a  pupil  in  Mr. 
Sanborn's  school.  I  think  the  article 
would  interest  you.  It  is  contained 
in  the  May  number  of  the  u  Harvard 
Magazine."  In  the  "Atlantic  Month 
ly"  for  August  you  may  look  for  a 
memorial  by  Mr.  Emerson. 

"He  considered  perfect  disease  as 
agreeable  as  perfect  health,  since  the 
mind  always  conformed  to  the  condi 
tion  of  the  body."  Where  is  there  a 
more  memorable  observation?  One 
month  before,  Sophia  had  written  to 
Mr.  Ricketson:  "You  ask  me  for 

54 


some  particulars  regarding  Henry's 
illness.  I  feel  like  saying  that  Henry 
was  never  affected,  never  reached  by 
it.  I  never  saw  such  a  manifestation 
of  the  power  of  spirit  over  matter. 
Very  often  I  have  heard  him  tell  his 
visitors  that  he  enjoyed  existence  as 
much  as  ever.  He  remarked  to  me 
that  there  was  as  much  comfort  in 
perfect  disease  as  in  perfect  health, 
the  mind  always  conforming  to  the 
condition  of  the  body." 

There  is  the  difference  of  a  single 
word  in  these  two  statements:  " com 
fort"  in  one  letter,  " agreeable"  in 
the  other.  If  the  sentiment  had  been 
"cooked"  for  dramatic  effect,  there 
would  not  have  been  the  shadow  of 
a  variation. 

Of  all  writers,  Thoreau  is  he  whom 
we  must  read  believingly.  Indeed, 
he  had  long  before  left  evidence  of 

55 


the  unimpeachable  truthfulness  of  this 
remarkable  death-bed  declaration. 

"I  am  confined  to  the  house  by 
bronchitis,  and  so  seek  to  content 
myself  with  that  quiet  and  serene 
life  there  is  in  a  warm  corner  by  the 
fireside,  and  see  the  sky  through  the 
chimney-top.  Sickness  should  not  be 
allowed  to  extend  farther  than  the 
body.  We  need  only  retreat  far 
ther  within  us,  to  preserve  uninter 
rupted  the  continuity  of  serene  hours 
to  the  end  of  our  lives.  As  soon  as 
I  find  my  chest  is  not  of  tempered 
steel  and  my  heart  of  adamant,  I  bid 
goodby  to  them  and  look  out  for  a 
new  nature.  I  will  be  liable  to  no  acci 
dents."—  Journal,  FeUy  14th,  1841. 

Twenty-two  years  later,  brought 
to  the  supreme  test,  he  proved  the 

56 


genuineness  of  his  philosophy.  He 
takes  his  place  beside  Socrates,  Epic- 
tetus,  Marcus  Aurelius: 

"A  soul  supreme,  in  each  hard 
instance  tried." 

The  crayon  portrait — now  in  the 
Concord  Free  Library — was  drawn 
by  Samuel  Worcester  Rowse,  and 
may  safely  be  accepted  as  'an  excel 
lent  likeness'  of  Thoreau  without  a 
beard.  Writing  from  England  to 
Professor  Norton,  the  poet  Clough 
bears  this  testimony  to  the  fidelity  of 
Eowse's  crayons:  "Child  brought  me 
your  present  of  Emerson's  picture, 
which  is  really,  I  think,  the  best  por 
trait  of  any  living  and  known-to-me 
man  that  I  have  ever  seen.  It  is  a 
great  pleasure  to  possess  it."  One 
year  later,  he  had  not  changed  his 

h  57 


mind:  —  "When  is  Rowse  coming 
over?  Will  you  give  him  a  letter  to 
me?  I  continue  to  think  his  picture 
of  Emerson  the  best  portrait  I  know 
of  anyone  I  know." 

Sophia  Thoreau's  letter  was  writ 
ten  seven  weeks  after  her  brother's 
death, — the  fresh  wound  still  bleed 
ing.  Poor,  stricken,  lonely  sister! 
Bereaved  of  such  a  brother,  mourn 
ing  for  the  'irreparable  loss/  yet 
prouder  of  her  brother  dead  than  of 
the  countless  carcases  strutting  in  the 
sunlight  and  kept  from  stinking  on 
ly  by  the  cheap  salt  of  civilization. 
Poor  Sophia!  she  was  quoting  from 
her  recollections  of  that  beautiful 
spring  day  when  Emerson  spoke  the 
eulogy  over  her  brother's  coffin.  But, 
pardonably  enough,  she  had  mis 
quoted.  Emerson  had  said :  "  His  soul 
was  made  for  the  noblest  society;  he 

58 


had  in  a  short  time  exhausted  the 
capabilities  of  this  world;  wherever 
there  is  knowledge,  wherever  there 
is  virtue,  wherever  there  is  beauty, 
he  will  find  a  home."  He  also  said: 
"The  scale  on  which  his  studies  pro 
ceeded  was  so  large  as  to  require 
longevity,  and  we  were  the  less  pre 
pared  for  his  sudden  disappearance. 
The  country  knows  not  yet,  or  in  the 
least  part,  how  great  a  son  it  has  lost. 
It  seems  an  injury  that  he  should 
leave  in  the  midst  of  his  broken  task, 
which  none  else  can  finish, — a  kind 
of  indignity  to  so  noble  a  soul  that  it 
should  depart  out  of  Nature  before 
yet  he  has  been  shown  to  his  peers 
for  what  he  is.  But  he,  at  least,  is 
content." 

0  my  friends,  having  the  clear 
testimony  of  his  sister's  letter  and 
also  Emerson's  confirmation  of  Tho- 

59 


reau's  deep  *  content/  can  we  not  say 
with  that  sister,  "of  course  he  was 
not  disappointed  when  his  time 
came."  But,  can  such  a  life  be  in 
any  sense  a  failure,  in  any  sense  be 
incomplete ;  is  an  early  home-call  an 
*  injury';  is  it  indeed  an  '  indignity' 
to  be  summoned  from  this  pitiful 
Vanity  Fair  by  the  Master  of  the 
Vineyard? 


Concord,  Oct.  20,  1862. 
Dear  Friend: 

Absence  from  home  together  with 
illness  must  be  my  apology  for  not 
before  acknowledging  your  last  kind 
letter. 

Certainly  it  will  give  me  much 
pleasure  to  present  the  walking-cane 
which  you  propose  to  send  to  Mr. 
.  .  .  .  ,  who  feels  keenly  the  depar- 

60 


ture  of  my  precious  brother,  and  who 
will  value  any  token  of  friendship 
shown  to  his  memory. 

I  am  very  glad  that  you  have  seen 
Higginson's  article.  It  was  an  out 
burst  of  affection  from  his  young 
heart  which  gratified  me  much. 

I  was  fortunate  lately  in  receiving 
from  Mr.  Emerson  a  specimen  of 
the  "  Edelweisse"  Gnaphalium  leonto- 
podium,  which  was  sent  to  him  by  a 
friend  who  brought  the  plant  from 
Tyrol.  How  I  wish  dear  Henry 
could  have  seen  it. 

I  can  never  tell  you  how  much  I 
enjoyed  copying  and  reading  aloud 
my  brother's  manuscripts  last  winter 
when  he  was  preparing  them  for  the 
press.  The  paragraph  which  you 
quote  from  the  essay  on  "  Walking" 
impressed  and  charmed  me  particu 
larly,  I  remember;  and  I  am  glad 
61 


to  hear  you  express  your  satisfaction 
in  regard  to  the  whole  article. 

I  doubt  not  that  ere  this  you  have 
enjoyed  the  paper  on  "Autumnal 
Tints."  I  am  sure  that  my  dear 
Brother  went  to  his  grave  as  grace 
fully  as  the  leaves  in  autumn.  [  The 
poor  sister  means,  as  undisturbedly  as 
the  leaf  flashes  into  all  the  gleaming 
glory  of  the  rainbow  and  silently 
obeys  the  Divine  behest  that  ordains 
its  death  when  Autumn  winds  grow 
chill.]  Oh!  that  you  could  have 
known  him  personally:  he  was 
wonderfully  gifted  in  conversation. 
[Aye;  and  now  there  is  only  silence 
and  the  patient  waiting  for  the  gra 
cious  manumission  of  Death!] 

Thank  you  for  the  hints  relating 

to  yourself  and  family.    What  you 

say  about  enjoying  the  days  as  if 

they  were  made  expressly  for  your- 

62 


self  denotes  a  spirit  of  rare  content 
ment,  which  I  am  happy  to  know 
you  possess. 

My  mother  joins  with  me  in  kind 
regards  to  yourself  and  family. 

Trusting  to  see  you  at  some  future 
time,  I  remain, 

Very  truly  yours, 

S.  E.  Thoreau. 

There  has  been  no  abatement  in 
that  'spirit  of  rare  contentment.' 
That  quiet  home  in  the  West  is 
radiant  therewith,  as  I  can  testify. 
Cheerful  and  serene,  the  old-time 
friend  of  Thoreau  and  " Mother"  are 
meekly  waiting, — 

"  Their  faces  shining  with  the  light 
Of  duties  beautifully  done." 


63 


Concord,  March  4th,  1863. 
Dear  Friend: 

I  am  happy  to  inform  you  of  the 
safe  arrival  of  the  cane.  The  pack 
age  reached  me  last  evening. 

It  was  with  mingled  feelings  of 
pleasure  and  pain  that  I  looked  on 
this  gift — a  rare  instance  of  friend 
ship,  most  worthily  bestowed. 

I  handed  the  cane  at  once  to  Mr. 
.  .  .  .  ,  who  expressed  great  satis 
faction. 

The  article  is  very  chaste  and 
beautiful.  I  should  like  to  know  the 
name  of  the  wood. 

Allow  me  to  thank  you  for  this 
token;  it  would  have  been  fully  ap 
preciated  by  my  departed  brother. 

Mr will  communicate  with 

you.  [Which  he  certainly  did  and 
after  the  manner  of  his  species.] 

64 


It  may  interest  you  to  know  that 
our  afflictions  have  been  heightened 
by  an  accident  which  happened  to 
my  dear  mother,  early  in  the  season: 
— she  fell  down  a  long  staircase, 
breaking  her  right  arm  and  other 
wise  seriously  injuring  herself.  Now, 
however,  she  is  slowly  recovering, 
and  joins  with  me  in  very  kind  re 
membrances  to  yourself  and  family. 
Yours  truly, 

8.  E.  Thoreau. 


"Allow  me  to  thank  you."  The 
italics  are  in  the  original.  "Mr.  .  .  . 
will  communicate  with  you" — though 
in  what  manner  this  deponent  saith 
not.  This  is  the  meaning  of  the  itali 
cised  "me."  Well,  here  is  the  t com 
munication'  from  the  recipient  of  a 
most  unique  cane,  originally  designed 

i  65 


for    Thoreau    himself,   but    arriving 
from  distant  California  too  late. 

Concord,  March  4,  1863. 
Dear  Sir: 

The  cane  arrived  at  this  place  last 
evening  and  was  delivered  to  me,  in 
perfect  order. 

X.  Y.  Z. 

I  have  in  my  keeping  the  very 
express-receipt  that  was  issued  to 
the  donor  of  the  cane,  and  it  contains 
just  as  much  pathos  as  the  recipient's 
" communication" — and  not  an  iota 
less!  This  cold-storage  'communica 
tion'  of  Mr.  X.  Y.  Z.  is  sui  generis — 
and  yet  we  are  told  that  only  the 
amphibia  have  oval  blood-corpuscles. 

The  cane  was  of  manzanita  wood, 
the  handle  was  made  from  a  buffalo 
horn,  and  the  silver  mountings  were 

66 


engraved  with  appropriate  quotations 
from  Thoreau's  writings.  It  was  a 
pious  thank-offering  from  the  two 
brothers — one  in  the  far  West  and 
the  other  in  California;  but  Death 
was  swifter  than  friendship,  and  the 
belated  tribute  was  given  to  the  dead 
man's  dearest  friend.  X.  Y.  Z.'s  note- 
let  contains  just  sixteen  words,  not 
one  of  which  will  spell  "Thanks"; 
but  there  are  two  and  one-half  pages 
of  "  Complementary  mottoes,"  nine 
teen  in  all:  as  if  this  grateful  friend 
of  Thoreau  had  said,  "Two  can  play 
at  that  game!"  Verily,  we  are  "fear 
fully  and  wonderfully  made." 

I  hold  in  my  hand  Sophia  Tho 
reau's  last  letter  to  the  Western  man. 
Her  mother  had  died,  the  broken 
home  had  become  to  the  solitary 
mourner  as  a  grave ;  its  every  room 
was  haunted  by  the  "old  familiar 

67 


faces,"  but  the  dear  lips  are  silent — 
and  that  is  the  silence  that  kills. 

Concord,  May  24th,  1873. 
Dear  Mr : 

After  several  weeks9  absence,  I  re 
turned  yesterday  to  Concord,  to  find 
the  volume  of  poems  you  had  so 
kindly  forwarded,  and  without  stop 
ping  to  cut  the  leaves  I  hasten  to 
thank  you  most  heartily  for  this 
friendly  remembrance. 

Just  now  I  am  about  to  leave 
Concord,  and  shall  make  my  home 
in  Bangor,  Maine.  Mr.  F.  B.  San- 
born' s  family  will  occupy  my  house. 

Perhaps  you  are  aware  that  my 
precious  mother  departed  a  year  since. 

You  will  be  interested  to  know 
that  Mr.  Channing  has  written  a 
memoir  of  my  brother,  which  will 
soon  appear. 

68 


Mr.  X.  Y.  Z.  is  as  whimsical  as 
ever — not  calling  at  my  house  or 
recognizing  me  on  the  street  for  the 
past  six  years. 

We  are  looking  for  Mr.  Emer 
son's  return  [from  Europe]  and  the 
town  will  give  him  a  cordial  recep 
tion.  I  hope  you  may  see  our  village 
again:  its  charms  increase  from 
year  to  year. 

I  promise  myself  much  pleasure  in 
the  poems  when  a  little  leisure  is  af 
forded  me. 

Please  excuse  this  hasty  note  and 
believe  me, 

Yours  truly, 

8.  E.  Thoreau. 

Twelve  days  after  the  burial  of  her 
brother  Henry,  Sophia  Thoreau  wrote 
to  Mr.  Daniel  Ricketson:  "Profound 
joy  mingles  with  my  grief.  I  feel  as 

69 


if  something  beautiful  had  happened 
— not  death." 

And  something  beautiful  had  in 
deed  happened — another  of  the 
countless  miracles  that  surround  us 
here:  a  soul  leveling  this  lift  that  it 
may  go  on  to  a  higher;  a  soul  that 
also  had  for  its  last  countersign  the 
"  J5quanimitas"  of  the  dying  Roman 
Emperor;  a  soul  that  found  'per 
fect  disease  as  agreeable  as  perfect 
health';  a  soul  to  which  this  world 
was  a  paradise — a  "  Paradise  Re 
gained"  by  the  clear  sanity  of  su 
preme  submission  to  the  Maker;  a 
soul  that  at  the  home-call  left  the 
only  paradise  it  had  ever  seen  and 
the  purest  delights  that  mere  man 
can  ever  know, — left  all  as  serenely 
and  grandly  as  the  setting  sun  sinks 
through  the  purple  glory  whose  last 
refulgence  gives  the  promise  of 
another  day. 

70 


Sophia  Thoreau  bade  farewell  to 
the  " charming  village"  wherein  she 
had  known  the  unspeakable  delight 
of  companionship  with  such  a  brother 
and  also  the  unutterable  pang  of  part 
ing  which  that  i something  beautiful' 
we  call  'death'  entails.  Think  of  her 
loneliness,  of  her  last  visit  to  that 
quiet  hilltop  in  Sleepy  Hollow:  fa 
ther,  mother,  sister,  and  brothers 
there;  she  the  last  lone  lingerer 
here. 

She  was  in  Bangor  two  short 
years,  and  then  "  something  beauti 
ful"  happened  again:  a  family  re 
union  where  the  amaranth  forever 
blooms,  where  there  is  no  night, 
where  never  a  tear  is  known  save 
those  of  that  Divine  compassion 
which  is  "touched  with  the  feeling 
of  our  infirmities." 


71 


Sophia  E.  Thoreau. 

From  a  daguerreotype  found  among  her  effects 
after  her  death.   Heretofore  unpublished. 


APPENDIX. 

Two  Visits  to  Concord,  Mass. 

From  an  old  Diary. 

Sept.  1st,  1863.  Arrived  at  Concord  about 
5  p.  m.  Stopped  at  the  Middlesex  House. 
Soon  after,  went  across  the  way  to  a  book 
store  and  bought  a  copy  of  the  "  Boston  Com 
monwealth."  On  the  first  page  found  Tho- 
reau's  poem  "The  Departure," 

In  this  roadstead  I  have  ridden. 

This  is  the  first  publication  of  it.  I  accepted 
it  as  a  sort  of  introduction  meant  for  me. 

This  [place]  appears  like  a  quite  orderly, 
staid  New  England  town  and  somewhat  re 
minds  me  of  Oberlin,  Ohio,  twenty  years  ago. 

Somehow,  I  feel  a  singular  contentedness 
and  as  if  my  good  genius  had,  for  the  time, 
got  the  upper  hand  of  all  obstacles  and  alone 
presided.  In  the  morning,  if  my  health  will 
permit,  intend  viewing  some  scenes  and  places 
more  dear  to  me  than  I  can  well  tell. 
73 


Sept.  2nd.  After  breakfast  went  into  the 
"old"  and  also  the  "new"  burying  ground; 
then  to  the  new  cemetery — "Sleepy  Hollow." 
The  ground  is  rolling  and  finely  shaded  with 
pines  and  oaks.  Did  not  find  what  I  was  in 
pursuit  of.  Enquired  of  a  man  at  work  there 
where  the  Thoreaus'  burying  place  was.  He 
said,  "At  the  new  grounds."  I  also  asked  if  I 
pronounced  the  name  Thoreau  right.  Went  to 
the  place  specified  and  found  one  grave  with 
headstone  marked,  "John  Thoreau,  Jr.,"  and 
another  near  by  newer  and  unmarked. 

Then  left  for  the  Walden  woods  by  the  old 
Lincoln  road.  Found  the  pond,  beanfield  and 
site  of  Thoreau's  house.  The  beanfield  is  now 
growing  trees,  pine,  birch,  etc.,  in  rows,  quin 
cunx  order — a  fine  sight! 

P.  M.  To  the  old  Battle-ground  back  of 
the  old  Manse.  Found  two  other  men  there, 
visitors  like  myself.  One  of  them  read  off  the 
inscriptions  on  the  monument  in  a  clear,  loud 
tone  of  voice,  bordering  somewhat  on  the 
pompous. 

After  supper  at  the  hotel,  called  upon  the 
Thoreaus,  mother  and  sister.  Found  them 
rather  expecting  me.  Was  made  quite  wel 
come  and  urgently  requested  to  get  my  things 
from  the  hotel  and  stop  with  them — did  so. 

They  are  decidedly  bright-appearing  women 
74 


— the  mother,  I  should  say,  about  sixty-five, 
the  daughter  [Sophia]  forty.  The  conversa 
tion  drifted  readily  to  [the  subject  of]  the  son 
and  brother.  Mr.  X.  called  and  planned  a 
walk  for  both  of  us  to-morrow.  Found  him 
sociable  and  attentive.  During  the  evening 
more  talk  about  Thoreau's  last  illness.  His 
mother  said:  "Why,  this  room  [their  parlor] 
did  not  seem  like  a  sick-room.  My  son  wanted 
flowers  and  pictures  and  books  all  around 
here  5  and  he  was  always  so  cheerful  and 
wished  others  to  be  so  while  about  him.  And 
during  the  nights  he  wanted  the  lamp  set  on 
the  floor  and  some  chairs  put  around  it  so  that 
in  his  sleepless  hours  he  could  amuse  himself 
with  watching  the  shadows." 

Sept.  4.  Fitful  sleeping  last  night:  too  full 
of  thinking.  This  A.  M.  called  upon  Alcott 
with  Miss  Thoreau.  Had  a  fine  interview 
with  him.  He  talked  about  Carlyle,  Tho 
reau,  books,  his  own  experience,  etc.  I  did 
not  see  his  daughter  Louise.  She  had  just 
come  back  from  the  Army  Hospital  at  Wash 
ington  j  had  lost  part  of  her  hair  and  so  was 
unpresentable. 

This  P.  M.,  X.  Y.  Z.  and  I  took  our  walk. 

Went  off  to  the  S.  W.  of  the  village  (on  'the 

old  Marlborough  Road/  I  think)  and  finally 

struck  Concord  river  in  a  curve  where  X.  said 

75 


he  and  Thoreau  used  to  go  in  bathing.  X. 
wanted  me  to  repeat  that  performance  with 
him;  I  let  him  go  in,  while  I  took  notes.  The 
opposite  and  sunward  bank  is  lined  with  a 
thick  growth  of  evergreens  which  cast  their 
dark  shadow  into  the  water  below.  The  faint 
ripple  on  its  surface  gave  the  view  the  appear 
ance  of  an  inverted  forest  seen  through  a  huge 
sheet  of  frosted  glass.  From  here  we  went  up 
on  to  the  Concord  Cliffs.  X.  showed  me  the 
Hollowell  Place,  Baker  Farm,  and  the  house 
where  John  Field  the  Irishman  once  lived. 
Thence  to  Walden  Pond  through  a  growth  of 
young  timber,  where  X.  showed  me  a  patch,  a 
rod  or  so  square,  of  "American  Yew"  [Taxus 
Canadensis]  which,  he  said,  Thoreau  was  very 
partial  to,  not  showing  it  to  everybody. 

From  the  Pond  and  house-plot  (the  building 
itself  has  been  moved  away  some  three  miles 
North)  through  the  deserted  beanfield,  to  the 
Lincoln  Road  where,  following  North,  through 
a  hollow,  X.  pointed  out  to  me,  a  few  rods  away, 
"Blister's  Spring,"  whither  I  went,  lay  down 
and  took  a  good,  cold  drink  to  the  memory  of 
the  writer  who  has  given  it  its  consequence. 

Sept.  4th.    At  home  with  the  Thoreau  fam 
ily.   P.  M.  Went  with  Miss  Thoreau  up,  N.  W., 
on  to  the  hill  ( "Nashawtuck"? ).    A  fine  view ! 
Ponkawtasset  off  to  the  N.  E.  a  mile  or  so. 
76 


The  Assabet,  at  the  north  of  us,  winding  its 
way  to  the  Concord  River  below.  The  old 
North  Bridge,  the  Monument  near  by  and  the 
village  spread  out  in  its  beauty. 

Sept.  5th.  A.  M.  Took  a  ride  with  the  two 
Misses  Thoreau,  maiden  aunts  of  Thoreau,  and 
Sophia.  Called  on  Mr.  [Edmund]  Hosmer — 
not  at  home.  Then  on  Mr.  Platt;  a  pleasant 
time  with  him.  Afterwards  drove  to  Mr. 
Bull's  home.  He  is  the  originator  of  the  Con 
cord  grape  that  I  had  already  sent  for.  Found 
Mr.  B.  a  splendid  talker  and  an  enthusiastic 
garden  man.  P.  M.  Went  alone  to  Walden 
Pond.  Took  a  swim  in  it.  Called  at  the  patch 
of  American  Yew  and  at  the  Cliffs.  Evening 
with  the  Thoreaus  at  their  home. 

Sept.  6th.  Before  breakfast,  visited  the 
"new"  burying  ground.  Found  Thoreau's 
grave.  After  breakfast,  took  quite  a  walk, 
N.  E.  of  the  town  and  mostly  in  the  woods. 
(I  have  doubtless  crossed  and  recrossed  the 
dear,  absent  man's  path  so  many  times  in  this 
morning's  trip!)  Found,  on  my  return,  that 
Mr.  Hosmer  had  been  at  the  Thoreaus'  to  re 
turn  my  call  of  yesterday.  Went  soon  after 
dinner  to  see  him  and  stayed  there  until  X. 
came,  by  agreement,  to  visit  the  "Estabrook 
Country"  (they  call  it)  to  take  a  look  at  the 
Thoreau  hut.  It  had  been  moved  there  some 
77 


years  before.  Took  a  memento,  a  broken 
shingle,  as  a  fitting  emblem.  Here  is  the  field 
of  boulders,  some  from  eight  to  ten  feet  high, 
and  such  clumps  of  barberry  bushes !  Evening 
at  Mrs.  Horace  Mann's  with  Miss  Thoreau. 
Met  there  Miss  Elizabeth  Peabody,  Mrs. 
Mann's  sister,  and  her  eldest  son  [Mrs.  Horace 
Mann's],  who  accompanied  Thoreau  on  his 
trip  West  seeking  health.  Found  the  young 
man  greatly  interested  in  Botany.  Miss  Pea- 
body  spoke  very  feelingly  and  freely  of  Mar 
garet  Fuller  of  blessed  memory. 

Sept.  Itli.  Arose  rather  early  this  morning 
and  took  a  walk  westward  some  mile  and  a 
half  to  a  mill  on  the  Assabet.  On  returning, 
found  a  branch  from  a  young  maple  already 
turned  of  a  fire-red,  a  part  of  which  I  broke  oft2 
and  took  back  with  me  and  threw  up  into  the 
branches  of  an  evergreen  that  faced  one  side 
of  the  Thoreau  house.  After  breakfast,  it 
caught  Mrs.  Thoreau's  eye  and  she  began 
wondering  what  it  meant.  When  I  showed 
her,  she  exclaimed:  "There!  that  was  just 
like  my  son,  Henry."  I  couldn't  help  but  feel 
a  little  flattered. 

Afternoon.     Took  a  ride  up  the  Assabet 
with  Mr.  S.    That  was  a  very  pleasant  inter 
view  :  Mr.  S.  seemed  so  easily  to  make  it  such 
—he  talked  so  kindly  and  well  of  Thoreau. 
78 


After  this,  called  upon  Mr.  Alcott,  in  com 
pany  with  X.,  also  upon  Mr.  Emerson.  A 
pleasant  fifteen  or  twenty  minutes'  interview. 
Mr.  Emerson  enquired  if  I  knew  much  about 
the  Michigan  University;  spoke  in  high  terms 
of  President  Tappan ;  asked  if  the  young  men 
of  the  West  were  not,  some  of  them  at  least, 
seeking  for  more  light  and  truth. 

After  dinner,  when  I  bade  the  Thoreaus 
good  bye,  Mrs.  Thoreau's  sister,  having  come 
down  from  her  room,  stood  at  the  foot  of  the 
stairs  weeping.  It  was  a  tender  leave-taking. 


Second  Visit  to  Concord. 

Eleven  years  later. 

August  27th,  1874.  At  the  Middlesex  House 
once  more,  arriving  a  little  after  noon.  Dined 
and  then  started  for  Walden  Pond.  On  my 
way  out,  on  the  Lincoln  Road,  I  stopped  at 
Blister's  Spring,  and  as  it  had  become  a 
sacred  fountain,  I  lay  down  and  deliberately 
drank  seven  swallows  of  its  cool,  clear  water 
to  the  memory  of  its  absent  poet.  And  now 
upon  the  site -of  that  house  in  which  Henry 
79 


Thoreau  lived  nearly  thirty  years  ago,  I  sit 
writing  up  this  diary  of  to-day. 

It  is  a  beautiful  place!  The  book  "Walden," 
telling  of  his  life  here,  first  notified  me  of 
its  author  and  his  writings:  that  formed  an 
epoch  in  my  life. 

The  cabin  is  gone,  long  since  moved  away, 
but,  Thank  God !  they  cannot  move  this  foun 
dation  nor  the  pleasant  memories. 

Passed  along  the  pond  side  toward  the  S.  W. 
to  find  the  Concord  Cliffs.  Found  a  man  in 
charge  of  the  picnic  grounds  on  the  railroad 
side  of  the  pond,  of  whom  I  enquired  the  way. 
He  had  never  heard  of  such  a  place,  but  I  got 
there  all  the  same.  The  vale,  lake,  river  run 
ning  through  it,  looked  much  as  they  did 
eleven  years  ago.  The  [Irishman's]  house  on 
the  Baker  Farm  has  disappeared.  Went  around 
West  and  North  to  the  village,  and  then  to 
Sleepy  Hollow  cemetery.  I  found  all  the  Tho 
reau  graves  (the  remains  having  been  removed 
thither  since  my  visit,  eleven  years  ago)  up 
back  on  a  little,  shaded  hill,  and  having  neat, 
plain  brown  headstones.  A  little  farther  on  I 
found  a  short,  thick  slab  of  marble,  at  the  head 
of  a  grave  and  on  it  was  marked  "Hawthorne." 
A  silent  farewell  to  the  graves  of  the  Thoreaus 
and  then  I  went  to  the  hotel. 

After  supper  went  to  visit  once  more  the  old 
80 


3 
a 
W 

CD 


8  *  o 

a  ^ 

"§  ^  £T 

E  CH  ® 

P    &  H3 


02         3 

III 


CD        H. 

8    ^ 


I 


Battle-ground  and  the  Monument.  On  my  re 
turn,  took  a  look  at  the  new  monument  (erect 
ed  to  the  memory  of  the  fallen  friends  in  the 
late  war)  standing  on  the  public  square.  When 
here  before  in  '63,  it  was  war  time  and  soldiers 
were  being  mustered  into  service,  and  they 
were  encamped  on  the  same  open  square.  Now 
only  some  of  their  names  are  on  record  there. 
Such  is  life! 

Aug.  29th.  Arose  at  5  o'clock  and  took  an 
early  walk  on  North  side  of  R.  E.  This  is  a 
grand  old  town!  How  quiet  and  restful  the 
people  seem!  After  breakfast  went  to  call 
upon  X.  His  housekeeper  went  up  stairs  and 
notified  him,  and  he  came  down  with  quite  a 
visible  scowl  on  his  countenance,  but  when  I 
told  him  who  I  was,  he  soon  called  me  to 
mind,  brightened  up,  was  quite  cordial  and 
made  me  welcome  to  his  room  below,  for  read 
ing,  writing,  and  so  forth.  I  accepted  this 
offer  with  pleasure,  in  the  meantime  making 
an  arrangement  for  a  walk  together  in  the 
afternoon. 

2  o'clock,  P.  M.  Started  out  with  Mr.  X.  for 
a  trip  of  over  one  and  a  half  or  two  miles 
S.  E.,  on  what  they  call  the  Old  Virginia 
Road,  to  see  the  house  where  Thoreau  was 
born.  I  found  my  companion  a  little  captious 
and  uneasy — I  did  not  keep  to  the  foot-path 
k  81 


beside  the  road!  In  our  conversing,  I  forgot 
to  do  it,  which  seemed  to  annoy  him.  (His 
whims  showed  themselves  otherwise  during 
that  walk.) 

We  found  the  house;  X.  was  good-natured 
and  communicative;  he  pointed  out  to  me  the 
corner  room  wherein  Channing's  "Poet-Na 
turalist"  first  saw  daylight.  We  returned  by 
the  way  of  Mr.  Alcott's,  took  tea  with  the  fam 
ily  and  stayed  there  until  nearly  nine  o'clock. 
The  older  daughter,  Louise,  was  away  from 
home,  but  I  met  her  sister  May.  She  is  quite 
an  artist;  bright,  active,  a  good  talker,  some 
what  forward,  and  she  reminded  me  of  some 
shrewd,  sprightly  young  man  that  had  tra 
velled.  She  is  quite  busy,  painting  and  selling 
her  work — her  father  said — to  raise  money 
for  taking  a  third  trip  to  Europe.  For  a  few 
moments  I  thought  of  patronising  her  a  little ; 
so,  pricing  a  piece  of  her  painting  on  a  black 
panel  about  the  size  of  a  chair  slat,  I  found  it 
to  be  $25.00.  I  "  threw  up  the  sponge." 

Mr.  A.  read  to  me  from  the  manuscript  of 
a  forthcoming  book.  I  liked  it  much,  but  X. 
became  visibly  restive  (A.  noticed  it)  and  fi 
nally  left  the  room  to  go  and  talk  with  the  wo 
men.  Afterwards,  X.  evidently  felt  that  he  had 
misdone,  so  on  leaving  he  protested  that  he 
was  interested  in  hearing  A.'s  writings  read  by 
82 


him,  and  he  made  an  appointment  thereupon 
to  go  with  me  there  tomorrow  afternoon  for 
that  very  purpose.  Returned  to  the  hotel  at 
9.30  P.  M.  (The  idea  of  repeating  that  call  at 
Alcotfs  to  gratify  a  whim!) 

Aug.  30th.  Up  at  six  o'clock  for  a  walk  past 
the  old  Monument  and  up  Ponkawtasset  hill, 
on  the  side  of  which  William  Ellery  Channing 
once  lived  and  got  the  credit  for  going  farther 
to  visit  Thoreau  in  his  hut  in  midwinter  than 
any  other  living  man — "that  was  not  a  poet!" 
It  was  pleasant  to  stand  there  and  see  the 
placid  Concord  running  through  the  meadows, 
where  thirty-five  years  ago,  near  this  time  of 
the  year,  Henry  Thoreau  and  his  brother 
rowed  down  this  stream  upon  that  trip  on  the 
account  whereof  were  strung  the  beads  that 
glitter  and  gleam  in  Thoreau's  first  book. 

In  the  afternoon,  called  upon  X.  to  go  to 
Mr.  Alcott's  to  hear  him  read.  A.  did  "  read  " ; 
and  X.  and  I  sat  and  [X.]  very  civilly  listened 
to  him. 

During  the  reading  Mrs.  Alcott  came  in, 
and  I  had  the  pleasure  of  making  farther  ac 
quaintance  with  her.  She  seemed  a  kind, 
sweet,  motherly  woman.  After  the  reading 
broke  up,  a  pleasant  general  chat  ensued.* 


*  "A  general  chat"  — and  Alcott,  the  Great  Converger,  present! 
We  trust  that  our  diarist  is  truthful.—  ED. 

83 


Tea  was  announced,  and  contrary  to  my  in 
tention,  I  ate  there  again.  After  that  Alcott 
gave  me  some  of  his  books. 

Mr.  S.  had  learned  that  I  was  in  town.  So 
he  found  X.  and  myself  and  invited  us  to  his 
house  this  evening.  I  found  that  he  was  liv 
ing  in  the  Thoreau  home  of  eleven  years  ago. 
In  the  meantime  Mrs.  Thoreau  has  died,  and 
her  daughter,  Sophia,  gone  to  live  with  rela 
tives  in  Maine.  He  gave  me  some  interesting 
information  about  William  B.  Wright,  author 
of  "The  Brook  and  other  Poems,"  Shelley's 
later  publishers,  Walt  Whitman,  John  Bur 
roughs,  Wilson  Flagg,  etc.  After  which  cake 
and  ale  were  served,  and  X.  and  I  left. 

Aug.  31st.  Arose  this  morning  about  Four 
o'clock  and  started  for  a  last  visit  to  Walden 
Pond.  I  shall  probably  not  see  it  again.  Here 
I  sit  with  my  back  against  a  little  pine  sap 
ling,  now  growing  on  the  site  where  once 
stood  the  hut.  A  few  feet  in  front  of  me  is  a 
small  but  gradually  increasing  pile  of  stones 
to  which  every  friend  of  Thoreau  is  expected 
to  add  his  unit.  I  brought  one  up  from  the 
pond  as  my  contribution  and  pencilled  on  it 
the  word  "  Bethel."  I  also  set  out  near  by  a 
plant  of  "Life-everlasting"  that  I  had  found 
while  on  the  way  here. 

As  I  sit  here  facing  the  pond,  I  observe  on 
84 


my  left,  about  fourteen  or  fifteen  rods  distant, 
a  grove  of  those  tall  "arrowy"  pines,  such  as 
Thoreau  used  for  his  house-building  twenty- 
nine  years  ago.  There  is  apparently  not  a 
breath  of  air  stirring.  Birds  are  singing  about 
me  and  even  the  hum  of  an  occasional  mos 
quito  is  still  heard.  I  left  the  pond,  passing 
out  by  the  beanfield.  The  grove  of  trees  that 
Thoreau  planted  thereon  in  payment  for  his 
occupancy,  looked  quite  sorry  from  the  effects 
of  a  fire  that  had  run  through  there  some  time 
previously. 

A  very  genial  last  visit  to  X.  He  gave  me  a 
number  of  books,  just  as  he  had  done  at  my 
first  visit.  As  I  bade  him  good  bye,  saying 
this  would  be  my  last  visit  to  Concord — that 
I  should  not  see  it  again,  he  answered:  "Oh, 
yes,  you  will." 


85 


Our  last  glimpse  of  Thoreau's  Western  cor 
respondent  shall  be  a  fragment  from  one  of 
his  letters  to  Thoreau's  sister,  Sophia. 

"  I  often  meet  your  brother  in  my  dreams 
and  with  this  peculiarity  about  these  meet 
ings:  while,  as  you  know,  our  night- visions 
are  often  abnormal,  grotesque,  and  disap 
pointing,  in  this  case  I  uniformly  find  my 
high  ideal  of  him  while  [I  am]  awake,  fully 
sustained.  Occasionally  he  has  become  as  it 
were  transfigured  to  me,  beyond  my  power  to 
describe.  So  I  have  for  some  time  been  in  the 
habit  of  associating  him  with  the  North  pole- 
star,  as  through  every  hour  of  the  twenty-four 
it  keeps  its  one  position  in  the  heavens." 

It  is  much  to  have  inspired  such  a  friend 
ship,  and  it  passeth  riches  to  have  been  capa 
ble  of  such  an  inspiration.  It  fitly  marks  an 
epoch  in  a  man's  life. 


86 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

RENEWED  BOOKS  ARE  SUBJECT  TO  IMMEDIATE 
RECALL 


LIMITED  CIRCULATION 


LIBRARY,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  DAVIS 

Book  SHp-50m-8,'63(D9954s4)458 


Jones,  S.  A. 
Some  unpublished 


CaU  Number: 

PS3053 

A3 

1899 


308452 


